UTAUQUA 

.RYandSCIENTIFIC 

CIRCLE 



THE 

ikH NATURE 



^1 



UB 



tfmOIKE 







•*^ 



:S'^ '"-^^ v^' 



•^^ . 









^^^ 






t<;i;^ 









■oi.^^^ :fMh 



•^c. c.-^ 

^<.^ 



■b"^ % 



°^ .'^o.- 






^ 










o N c . -<^ 



* . -^^ 



' ♦• s 



^. 



4.^ V 



\.<\.v..,%,^<'-\^ 




-0^ 






X"' 



^^^ V*' 









x<t>' '^^. 



•^/ 






•i' 



■^OO'^ 



"^, .-^^ 



"'oo'« 



.h^ 






*. « 















^ 






X 



- 









.\ii 



,0-' 






^•^'' ..\-^^^X ^'U 



O. ^ ^ k'^ ^0 












^ 

?* 



o^>"_. %% 



•^bo^ 










a\' .v.b^ ^^ 



0*'. 



J^ 



■*bo^ 
























/^ '^' X^>^^^\/ - 




■^oo^ 




'^ "^^ v-^' 



.0 o^ 



A^\.-. 









■n*. ^^,'^^%'^^* oV" ^' \^ 



^^" -^^ 



,#• 



•^.. <- 




The Human Nature Club 

An Introduction to the 
Study of Mental Life 



BY 



EDWARD THORNDIKE, Ph. D. 




NEW YORK CLEVELAND CHICAGO 






Copyright, igoo, 
By Edward Thorndike. 

Copyrlfht Office. 



THE HUMAN NATURE CLUB 



CHAPTER I 

WHAT THE BRAIN DOES 

Mrs. Ralston stood at the door of her son's room 
and knocked. '^Breakfast in five minutes, Arthur. 
I thought you got up when I called before." *'All 
right; I'll be down," came from within, and Mrs. 
Ralston w^^nt downstairs. There she found the rest 
of the family assembled in the sitting-room. **Arthur 
will be down in a few minutes; we'll wait for him," 
she said; and then turning to Mr. Tasker, who was 
half boarder, half friend of the family, **How did you 
like the lecture last night?" 

"It was fine," was the reply. *' Solid and worth 
while, and still very entertaining. His general theme 
was the interesting things one can find in the world 
all about him if he'll only look. You remember how 
we puzzled over his title, *They Have Eyes'? He 
claimed, for instance, that we could see how the rivers 
and valleys and plains and lakes have been formed if 
we'd only watch Bear Brook. " 

**Yes!" broke in Mrs. Elkin, Mrs. Ralston's mar- 
ried daughter; **but don't you think that it depends 
on who looks? The geologist sees all those things in 
Bear Brook because he knows geology, just as a cook 
could tell just how hot the oven was by looking at 



2 The Human Nature Club 

a loaf of cake, while you, though you are a school- 
master, couldn't see anything but dough and crust." 

**I know that's so in some things," said her hus- 
band; '*for don't you remember how the man who 
had the high school before Tasker would see all sorts 
of bugs and worms when he was walking along the 
road, things you couldn't see till he almost put his 
finger on them? It isn't the eyes that see; it's the 
knowledge behind them. It wasn't his eyes; it was 
his course at the state agricultural college. I thought 
last night at the lecture that if it weren't so, I wouldn't 
have any excuse for knowing almost nothing of the 
world outside the boot and shoe business and the art 
of beguiling brook-trout. You have to study a long 
while before you can see things. If there were any 
2»cience that didn't need systematic school training, 
I'd study it." 

**I wish we could study the real world somehow," 
replied Tasker. * 'We've had a Browning class and 
a Greek art class and a Church History class, and 
I wouldn't wonder if it would do us good to stop 
studying books and study real things for a while. 

''Let's study breakfast," said Mrs. Ralston. 
*'I wonder what's the matter with Arthur?" 

*'I'll run up and bring him down," said Mr. Elkin. 
*'You folks go ahead." 

He went up and entered Arthur's room without 
knocking. 

There sat Arthur, all dressed except one shoe, 
which he held in his right hand. His left hand was 
scratching his head, and his face wore a meditative 
expression. 



The Human Nature Club j; 

"What's the matter, Arthur? Breakfast's all 
ready." 

**I know that, Elkin. Say! Can you tell me how 
many stairs you just came up?" 

''What in the world do you want to know that for? 
Come on down to breakfast." 

"I won't go down those stairs till I either know 
how many stairs there are or know why I don't know. 
I don't believe you know yourself." 

*'There are — there are — well, I guess I don't. 
Odd, too; I've been up and down them hundreds of 
times." 

Arthur began to laugh at his brother-in-law, and 
the latter to cover his confusion went out and called 
to those below: "Come up here, everybody. Arthur's 
gone daft. He's sitting here raving about stairs." 

"Yes! Come up here," cried Arthur; "we'll see 
who's the fool. Stand up *n a row there," he added 
as they came into the room. "How many stairs did 
you just come up, mother? Well, well! And you've 
been up those stairs thousands of times. Next! Next! 
Eyes to see! This is an observant family." 

"What's got into you, Arthur?" said his sister. 
"It is queer that we should all know so little about 
a thing we've done so often; but what started you 
thinking such stuff?" 

"You know that lecture last night? Well, when 
I got out of the bath-tub I thought I'd start in to 
observe things, and I wondered what I could observe, 
and then I wondered why I felt fresh from a cold 
bath, and I couldn't tell; and that set me thinking 
while I was dressing that lots of common things were 



4 The Human Nature Club 

really rather mysterious, and then it struck me that 
I had dressed myself without thinking about it at all, 
and I wondered at that; and then I noticed that I had 
my right shoe on, and I wondered if I always put that 
one on first; and then I wondered about doing things 
without thinking about them, and thought of the next 
thing I had to do — to go downstairs, that is — and 
I realized that I generally did that without thinking 
how to do it at the time, and then it struck me that I 
really couldn't think how to do it, that I didn't even 
know whether there were a dozen steps or twenty. 
And then I wondered how I could have gone up and 
down those stairs and never noticed that. I suppose 
you folks are hungry and think I'm silly." 

'*Yes! I know why I want to eat," remarked 
Mr. Elkin. 

They ate their meal in a queer way. Mr. Tasker 
sat with his brows furrowed, whispering occasionally 
to himself. Arthur would occasionally stop eating 
to stare at some one or apparently to question himself. 
At last he blurted out, **Why do you suppose Emma 
likes boiled eggs, while I, her brother, abominate 
them?" 

Everybody laughed except Mr. Tasker. He pulled 
out his watch, and said: ''Will you folks all listen to 
me a few minutes? I have a scheme. If you'll keep 
still for five minutes, I'll tell you about it. I must 
go down to the school at a quarter-past eight, and 
you can make fun of it after I've gone. You know 
before the excitement of Arthur's discovery we were 
saying that it would be a fine thing if we could study 
some things in the real world for ourselves, instead 



The Human Nature Club | 

of just soaking 1n book knowledge, if we could get 
the sort of pleasure (and profit too) that the lecturer 
last night told us came from looking to see how things 
really are. Now, no one of us has enough knowledge 
to start in studying bugs or plants or brooks, and not 
all of us have enough of an interest in any one of 
these things to induce us to do the studying. But 
I believe there's one thing that we're all interested in, 
that's well worth looking at, but that doesn't require 
us to read German books or buy microscopes or 
make big collections. Arthur has opened his eyes 
to it this morning, and I got my idea from him. Let's 
look and see how real people live and act and think. 
Let's get our eyes open to human nature, to the real 
world, not of mountains, or brooks, or birds, or 
beetles, but of people. Let's have a club, 'The 
Human Nature Club,' whose business it shall be to 
see how and why we and our friends do the things we 
do, think the thoughts we think. Let's start in by 
finding out how^ we can dress ourselves without think- 
ing about it, and how we can go up and down a flight 
of stairs from one to twenty years without learning how 
many stairs there are. Think it over; I must go. 
Good morning all!" 

''Wait a minute; I'll go with you," said Arthur. 
They left the house together, Mr. Tasker going to 
the high school and Arthur to his duties as assistant 
manager of the Redpath Tool Company. 

Mr. Tasker did not return to the house till nearly 
eight o'clock that evening. When he came into the 
sitting-room he was surprised to see besides the regu- 
lar household, Miss Fairbanks, a music-teacher who 



6 The Human Nature Club 

lived in the neighborhood, Miss Atwell and Miss 
Clark, two teachers in the graded school, and Mr. 
Henshaw, the manager, editor, chief reporter — in 
fact, the general producer of the Westfield Registe7\ 

'*Who is having a surprise party?'* he exclaimed. 

'*This is the Human Nature Club," replied Mrs. 
Elkin. ''I spent most of the morning talking about 
it, and all of the afternoon hunting these folks and 
telling them about it. We've just elected you boss, 
or rather president, and we're ready to start ahead." 

'* We've progressed this far," added the editor. 
"Everybody here knows that the scheme is to watch 
real people, especially ourselves, to see what they 
are, how they learn things, why they think and feel 
and act as they do. Everybody is to keep his eyes 
open for facts about people. We had just begun to 
air our wisdom in connection with that mystery of the 
stairs. Now, how shall we run this organization, Mr. 
President?" 

**I suggest," responded Mr. Tasker, *'that we 
leave rules and regulations till we have investigated 
the 'mystery of the stairs,' as you call it. What did 
you decide, Arthur? You are the father of this, our 
first problem. " 

"I don't know that I have decided. I've been 
thinking of a number of things like it, things which 
I z^-Vi get along with first-rate, but which I don't seem 
to know much about. I didn't know whether there 
were four or five or six buttons on my vest; I don't 
know how many hooks there are in my closet, though 
I've used that closet for eight years." 

*'It's the same sort of thing, isn't it, when I go 



The Human Nature Club 7 

along the hall in the dark and stop just in front of my 
bedroom door? I couldn't for the life of me tell how 
many steps I take, but I always stop in the right place. '* 

**That's like my playing the piano/' said Miss 
Fairbanks; **I see the notes and put my fingers on 
the keys, but I don't once think, 'That is G, ' or 'That 
is a half-note higher,' or *Now I will stretch my little 
finger way out.' Of course I could if I stopped to 
think about it, but I don't, any more than you think 
of the number of stairs or the number of steps. I'm 
sure we all do do things that way without thinking 
about them, and we can agree for a start that one can 
do things without at the time or afterward knowing 
much about it." 

*'That is so," said Mr. Tasker; ''but it makes two 
new questions out of our old one. In the first place, 
how do we come to do things without having to think 
about what we're doing? In the second place, how 
do we know so little afterward about what we've done 
so many times?" 

"I think that perhaps I can answer the first ques- 
tion," said Miss Atwell. "When I was visiting Kate 
Maxwell, at Barnard College, I went to some classes 
with her, and at one of them the professor was lec- 
turing about the brain. He said that the brain was 
a machine for connecting our bodily acts or move- 
ments with what we heard and saw and felt. For 
instance, the reason why when you see a team coming, 
you get out of the way, is that some sort of commotion 
in your eyes is transmitted along a nerve to your 
brain and stirs up some commotion there, which is 
transmitted through other nerves to your muscles and 



8 The Human Nature Club 

somehow makes them move your body in such a fash- 
ion that you run across the street out of the way. As 
far as I could make out, the brain was like the big 
switchboard in the telephone office. Messages com- 
ing in from all over the body get connected with 
the proper wires, so to speak, and sent out to the 
right muscles. Now, if I'm right, all you have to 
suppose to answer our question is that the commotion 
or message can be sent to the right muscles without 
your thinking about it — without the operator at the 
switchboard having to bother about it, to stick to my 
illustration. Thus just seeing the top of the stairs 
and feeling each one as you step rouses just the right 
movements. When you were first learning to play the 
piano you would make mistakes and have to think 
about what you were doing, but after enough practice 
the brain would do the work of itself. The commo- 
tion aroused in the brain by seeing the notes of a cer- 
tain chord would go in a certain way — that is, to the 
right muscles — because it had gone that way so many 
times. It would be like water that having worn 
a certain channel always runs in it. Excuse me for 
talking so long, but I think we can see a reason for 
our being able to do things unconsciously if we think 
how the brain acts.*' 

**That sounds all right, with one exception,'* 
answered Mr. Tasker. "You say, if I understand you, 
that anything which we have done in certain circum- 
stances tends to be done again if the same circum- 
stances occur again. But that isn^t so if the results 
of the act are painful. Little Helen, the first time 
she saw a candle — when she was about a year and 



The Human Nature Club 9 

a half old — put out her hand to take it and was 
burned. According to your theory she would the 
next time she saw a candle, put out her hand. But 
as a matter of fact she didn't. She shrank back 
without reaching. What you say is true of cases 
where the results are pleasurable or indifferent, and 




Fig. I. 



explains our cases, but it needn't always be true. 
Isn't that so?" 

Miss Atwell nodded assent, and Mr. Tasker con- 
tinued: *'I wish you'd let me draw a picture to show 
my notion of what you said about the brain, and see 
if I understand you. Perhaps it will help us all." 

Arthur brought in the baby's blackboard, and Mr. 
Tasker drew his picture (Figure i), giving at the 
same time the following explanation: 



io The Human Nature Club 

*'This picture is supposed to represent very 
roughly what happens in doing two things which we 
do automatically — that is, without thinking about 
how to do them. The two things are playing the 
piano and chewing gum. In playing the piano some- 
thing happens in the eye which sends some sort of 
a current or commotion or explosion up to the brain, 
as I show by the line a b. This results in some sort 
of current or commotion being sent to the muscles 
which move the forearm and fingers, as I have shown 
by the dotted line B A, Just how the thing coming 
from the eye gets switched so that it starts the thing 
going to the arm I don't know, as I show that by the 
line of crosses b B^ which means simply that somehow 
a b \^ connected with B A so that what the eye 
sees influences what the arm does. In chewing gum 
the presence of the gum in the mouth arouses the jaw 
muscles to act in the same way, a continuous line, 
m b^, representing the mouth-brain connection, a 
dotted line, B^ /, the brain-jaw muscle connection, 
and a line of crosses the connection between the two. 
Does that represent the ideas of the company and 
agree with what the professor said, Miss Atwell?*' 

**Your explanation is worthy of our high school 
principal, but I'm glad you don't have to teach draw- 
ing," said Mr. Henshaw. 

**Don't laugh at my drawing," was the reply; **for 
if that represents the idea, I'm going to try another 
to show my general idea of the brain as I've derived 
it from Miss Atwell's description. Here is the brain 
(Figure 2), with a lot of things — nerves, I suppose 
they are — coming in from all over the body and bring- 



The Human Nature Club 



1 1 



ing in the 'commotions* that correspond to the electric 
currents coming in to the telegraph office over the 
wires. The continuous lines represent those. The 
dotted lines are the nerves going out to all the 
muscles. The crosses are the connections made on 




Fig. 2. 

the switchboard. Multiply all these lines by thou- 
sands and you have the brain. Is that right?" 

'*It's right as far as it goes, but the brain is more 
than that, I'm sure, though I can't remember just 
what else the lecturer did say about it." 

'*Why wouldn't it be a good thing for me to run 
over to Dr. Leighton's house, and see if he can't tell 
us a bit about our brains. We can learn about the 
outside facts of human nature ourselves by watching 
ourselves and other folks, but we can't watch our 
brains; and he has had the chance to study them, so 



12 The Human Nature Club 

why not profit by his experience? I think that we'll 
find that the brain plays a big part in making human 
nature what it is in other things besides these uncon- 
scious performances, habits, automatic acts or what- 
ever you call them." 

Mr. Henshaw*s proposition was received with 
approval and he went after the doctor. The others 
spent the next ten minutes in talking over what had 
been said and in congratulating themselves on the 
success of their first meeting. 

'*This has been as hard thinking as I've done for 
a good while, apart from business," remarked Mr. 
Elkin; *'yet I declare I've enjoyed every minute of it. 
It pays to think about things if you know anything 
about them to start with, and can work them out your- 
self, or make believe that you do." 

"My head is full of about twenty questions to be 
investigated, which will be, if anything, more interest- 
ing than this one," added Arthur. 

So they kept on until Mr. Henshaw came in with 
Dr. Leighton. After he had greeted the company, 
the doctor began: 

*'Mr. Henshaw tells me that you are observers of 
human nature, and have a notion at the start that 
what people do and feel depends largely on the way 
their brains work, and since you can't yourselves 
observe what goes on in people's brains you have 
asked me to tell you something about it. 

**You are quite right in thinking that human 
thought and action, in other words, human nature, 
depend on what happens in the brain. For instance, 
Mr. Tasker here is a steady sort of person, but if 



The Human Nature Club 13 

I should inject into his brain a little of a certain drug, 
he would become very volatile and changeable for the 
time being, would feel very wretched and then very 
exalted, etc. His nature would be changed for the 
time being. Let me cut out a little piece in one part 
of your brain and you'd never see things any more. 
Let me cut out a little piece in another place and you 
would lose your command of language. Let a person 
tire his brain by overworking or maltreating it and his 
nature grows irritable. You have all seen that in 
young children after an exciting, restless day. If a 
person's brain doesn't grow, he may really have no 
human nature at all, but be an idiot, almost like a 
mere beast. 

''What, then, is this brain of ours, and how does it 
do its work? In order to be clear I shall have to 
simplify things somewhat, and I beg you not to imagine 
that in these ten minutes you will get an accurate or 
complete notion. I will try, however, not to give 
a false notion. The brain and the other parts of the 
nervous system are a very complicated apparatus for 
fitting our acts to our surroundings, for making us 
swallow food when it's in our throat, reach for things 
we want, take food when we're hungry, go to work 
when it's time, etc. The brain's business is to be 
influenced by what happens to us, what we see, hear, 
feel, etc., and to influence what happens in us — /. ^., 
what we do or say. It thus is the connecting link 
between what the world does to us and what we do to 
the world. 

**Now, to see how the brain or nervous system does 
this, how it works, we must see how it is made. So 



H 



The Human Nature Club 




first look at this picture, a picture of one of the units 
or * cells, ' millions of which together make up the 
brain. You see that it looks like a string frayed out 
at both ends, and has a notable swelling in one place 
and little side strings running off 
from it and fraying out at their 
ends. The real thing which it rep- 
resents may be very short or may 
be several feet long, but it is never 
anything like as big around as the 
picture shows it. A hundred of 
these nerve-cells, or brain units, or 
nerve-strings stuck together in a 
y7-^_^^ bundle would not be as big around 

^ I as the smallest needle. Now, 

imagine nerve cells or strings like 
this with one end in the eye and 
the other end in the brain or spinal 
cord, which is really a part of the 
brain. Imagine other thousands 
starting from the ears and nose 
and tongue and fingers and stomach 
and joints — in fact, from different 
organs all over the body — and end- 
ing in the brain. Imagine, also, 
other thousands of such nerve- 
cells or strings with one end in the brain and the 
other end in connection with some muscle, or per- 
haps gland. Imagine, in the third place, thousands 
of such nerve-strings, entirely inside the brain — 
I always mean to include the spinal cord, too — run- 
ning from one part of it to another. Imagine all 




X 




Fig. 3. 



The Human Nature Club 15 

these strings to keep the same places. Then you will 
have a notion of what the brain and nervous system 
is. It is just the sum total of all these nerve-cells 
running from eyes, ears, skin, etc., to a central mass, 
where there are a lot of connecting strings, and 
running out from it to all the muscles. You were 
quite right in likening the brain to the switchboard 
of a telephone office; and just as a telephone system 
is really nothing but a lot of incoming and outgoing 
wires and a lot of connecting wires at some central 
station, so the nervous system, including the brain, is 
really only a lot of nerve-cells, incoming cells, outgo- 
ing ceils and connecting or associative cells. 

*'That is what the brain is. Now, what the brain 
does is just what the particular nerve strings or cells 
do. When we say that anything is done by the brain, 
we mean just that it is done by one or ten or ten 
thousand of these nerve strings or cells. Just as 
a telegraph system acts only as the wires act, so the 
brain acts only as its cells act. How, then, do these 
cells act? What does a nerve-cell do? If we answer 
that question we shall know what the brain does. 

"Now I shall tell you the important, the essential 
business of a nerve-cell. There may be other things 
which it does, but its one sure and chief business, or 
function^ to use a scientific word, is to transmit^ to so 
act that any commotion or action at one end of it will 
be carried along it to its other end. If you will call 
to mind some common cases of transmission, you will 
get a clear notion of what I mean. Drop a stone 
in a pond, and the wave around it causes another 
wave in a wider circlCj that causes still another, and 



i6 The Human Nature Club 

so on till the last wave may be at the pond's edge. 
The water, we say, has transmitted the wave from the 
center to the edge of the pond. The action or com- 
motion at the center has been carried across the 
water. Take a piece of clothesline ten or fifteen 
feet long; shake one end of it up and down ; the * wave' 
of motion passes along the string to the other end. 
Put one end of a poker in the fire, and the other end 
gets hot. The electric discharge of a lightning-flash 
striking one end of a lightning-rod is transmitted 
along it to the ground. The rod conducts it, 
we say. 

*'Now, we don't know just what sort of commotion 
it is that a nerve-cell, a nerve-string, conducts, or 
just how it transmits it; but we do know that it does 
do it, that its business is to conduct what we may call 
nerve-currents or nervous discharges set up at one 
end of it to its other end. Thus a commotion or nerve- 
current, set up or started in cells having their ends 
in the eye by the sight of a dollar bill on the sidewalk, 
is transmitted or conducted along them to their ends 
in the brain. Now, this commotion or discharge or 
current can pass from the frayed end of one cell to 
the frayed end of another cell close enough to it, just 
as the electric current can go from one wire to another 
if they are near enough. I'll show this in a rough 
picture (Figure 4). So the current started in the eye, 
having reached the brain, may go over to the ends of 
connecting cells, go along these, go over to other 
cells, go along them, and finally end up at certain 
muscles. It may there make the muscles move in 
certain ways so that we stoop to pick the dollar bill 



The Human Nature Club 



17 



Cell A. 



up, just as an electric current may be transmitted 
from a battery through switch after switch until it 
finally ends in a charge of dynamite and blows a 
rock to pieces. 

*' Moreover, just as an electric cur- 
rent may blow up a rock, or light a 
lamp, or silver-plate a spoon, or connect / 
your telephone with mine, or with Mr. 
Elkin's, or with that of some man in 
New York, according to what connec- 
tions are made between the different 
wires, so the result of any nerve-cur- 
rent in a nerve-cell depends on what 
other cells that cell is connected with. 
One person's nerve-cells are so con- 
nected that the sight of a mouse makes 
her jump on a chair; another person's 
nerve-cells are so connected that the 
sight of a mouse makes him seize a cane 
and try to exterminate it. A cat's 
nerve-cells are so connected that the 
sight of a mouse makes her jump at it. 
When people act differently in the same 





Fig. 4. 

" The current 



circumstances, it generally means that P|ff ^^ the"other 

via the frayed 
ends at x. 



their nerve-cells have diiferent connec- 
tions. 

''I mustn't take any more of your time, and I have 
a patient to see this evening, anyway. Any time 
that I can help you again, be sure to let me know." 

The doctor hastily left the room, in the midst of 
exclamations of thanks from the company. 

'*Dr. Leighton ought to have been a teacher," 



1 8 The Human Nature Club 

said Mr. Tasker. "That was a pretty good piece of 
description to be given extemporaneously." 

*'Well! These young doctors that the good medi- 
cal schools are turning out know their business, 
I think," replied Mr. Elkin. **What were you scrib- 
bling all the time?" 

*'You'll be glad later that I did scribble. I've 
taken down every word in shorthand, and I*m going 
to have our typewriter make a copy. That talk of 
the doctor's will do us about ten times as much good 
if we read it over carefully and keep a copy to refer 
to. It seems all clear now, but by next week it will 
be foggy in my mind, I'm sure, if I don't have 
a chance to go over it. If any of you would like to 
do the same, I'll get more copies made." 

''One for me, please," said Mr. Tasker; and all 
agreed to come to the next meeting with all the 
doctor's description clearly fixed in their minds. 

**It's time for me to go,'* said Miss Atwell. "What 
question is proposed for next time?" 

"I'd like to know why people who are very old 
think most about things that happened when they 
were very young," said Mrs. Elkin. 

"And I'd like to know why you always break 
dishes when you are all tired out mentally." 

"I'd like to know if there are any things that we 
can do not only without thinking about them, but also 
without even learning to do them at all," said Arthur. 

"I'd like to find the explanation of some of the 
things the Christian Science people do," added the 
editor. "But let's leave it to Mr. Tasker." 

"Well, I suggest that Arthur's point be taken up 



The Human Nature Club 19 

first, at any rate, as it seems more closely connected 
with to-night's discoveries, and also that some one 
sum up the result of the Human Nature Club's find- 
ings so far. Is that agreed? Very well; 1*11 appoint 
Miss Atwell. The Human Nature Club is adjourned 
until next Saturday.*' 

NOTES BY THE EDITOR. 

The gist of this chapter is that the brain is a machine for 
making connections between what we feel and what we do, so 
that we can fit our acts to our surroundings. We can do things 
without thinking about them when such connections have been 
made. In technical terms, the brain is an associative mechan- 
ism, and can carry on automatic activities. 



CHAPTER II 

THINGS WE DO WITHOUT LEARNING 

'*The Human Nature Club will come to order. 

**Let us have the report of the last meeting from 
Miss Atwell. " 

*'Mr. Chairman, at its first meeting the club inves- 
tigated the facts reported by Mr. Arthur Ralston, 
and found that they suggested two questions: First, 
how we could do things without thinking of what we 
were doing; and secondly, how we could do a thing 
a great many times and still know very little about 
it. The latter question we did not reach, as it seemed 
rather apart from the first, but the first we answered 
by saying that the brain could learn by practice to fit 
our actions to our surroundings in certain cases, and 
so finally get along without any assistance from our 
thoughts; the act, that is, becomes automatic. With 
the help of Dr. Leighton, we found the reason for 
the growth of such habits to be the structure of the 
brain, it being really not, as it looks, a big lump of 
jelly-like stuff, but a wonderfully complex system 
of connections between the parts of our body which 
sense or feel things and those parts which cause our 
actions.'* 

*'If there are no objections, this report is accepted. *' 

'*The particular object of this meeting is to report 
observations of actual facts bearing on the question 
of whether there are any things we can do or know 

20 



The Human Nature Club 21 



<*-. 



without learning them at all, but I understand that it 
won't be considered unpardonable if any member 
chooses to report interesting facts on any other topic. 
I will first call on Mrs. Ralston/' 

**Well, Stephen — or Mr. Chairman, I should say — 
I never did suppose that I should be asked to teach 
folks anything, and I declare I never should have 
thought of the things I have this week in the way 
I have if the questions hadn't been put just so. But 
when you come to think of it, breathing is quite 
a thing to do, but babies don't have to learn, and 
they know enough to suckle and to cry when they are 
left alone in the dark. They know how to put things 
in their mouths — mine knew too well — and I'm sure 
nobody has to teach them to ask questions or to look 
into every new thing they come across. So there are 
some things sure. " 

*'Does any one wish to deny the correctness of 
Mrs. Ralston's observations or to oppose any contrary 
facts?" 

**I'm not sure about the asking questions," said 
Mr. Henshaw. '*In the case of our Robert, it seemed 
as if he did learn to ask questions by imitation, and 
kept it up because he liked to have you talk to him — 
liked to talk himself, too. I also thought, as Mrs. 
Ralston spoke of children touching and moving and 
tasting and fooling with everything they came across, 
that it was lucky they did so of their own accord 
without having to learn to. If they weren't naturally 
curious that way, they wouldn't learn about their 
surroundings half so fast. You may have seen a scrap 
I put in the paper about a week ago, quoting a great 



22 The Human Nature Club 

scientist, who said that children learned more about 
the world in their first four years than in any four 
afterward. " 

**I see Mrs. Elkin has something to say. Mrs. 
Elkin.'* 

'*I'm not sure, but I think that children walk with- 
out having to learn. It sounds preposterous, because 
we always talk about teaching babies to walk, but 
I really believe that they walk of their own accord, 
just because they are made so that they feel like it 
when the proper time comes. For don't you remem- 
ber, mother, how the doctor told us not to let Helen 
stand or try to get her to walk, because he was afraid 
it might cripple her, and how one day when we did 
put her down with her feet on the floor she started 
right across the room? She certainly walked, and 
also certainly hadn't ever tried before. I think most 
mothers begin to urge children before their brains or 
muscles, or whatever it is, are ready.*' 

'*I don't believe that can be so with most chil- 
dren," said Miss Clark, **or people would have 
noticed it." 

''That's a poor argument. Miss Clark, if you'll 
permit me to say so. It's very evident that we don't 
notice a quarter of what really happens." 

'*And I've noticed just what Mrs. Elkin did," said 
Miss Atwell. "For a while I was a tutor to Dr. 
Prentice's daughter in New York. He was rather 
queer, and he wouldn't let Mrs. Prentice or the nurse 
urge the youngest boy at all. When I went there the 
child could stand up by a chair. I don't know how 
he came to do that — and one day a pair of cuffs on 



The Human Nature Club 23 

the table caught his attention, and he walked right 
across and got them.'* 

''Wouldn't it be a good thing to ask some of the 
people we know who have babies to watch them and 
see," said Miss Clark. ''If children did really know 
how to walk when the right time came, I should think 
it was unwise to tease them to before they were ready. 
It might hurt their bones or something." 

"That's a good idea," responded the chairman. 
"Now, are there any more cases of things we do with- 
out learning — do just because we are made in a cer- 
tain way? Miss Clark?" 

"I wonder how it is about talking. Is any part of 
the faculty of language born in us?" 

"It can't be, because people born deaf don't talk,'* 
answered Mr. Elkin. 

"And a child of English parentage talks all French, 
no English, if he's brought up among French-speak- 
ing people," added Mr. Tasken "I do think, 
though," he continued, "that human beings differ 
from other animals in making a lot of different sounds 
— babbling, so to speak — and this they do instinc- 
tively — that is, without learning. That gives, 
I should say, the materials out of which imitation and 
learning can fashion language." 

"You folks mustn't try to make out that nothing 
comes from learning," said Mr. Elkin, with a smile. 
"You have to learn the shoe business." 

"if people were born knowing how much eleven 
times five was, and how to read and write, we'd 
lose our positions, too," said Miss Atwell to Miss 
Clark. 



24 The Human Nature Club 

After the general laugh was over, Arthur Ralston 
spoke up: 

"Mr. Chairman, if it's allowable to study human 
nature by comparing it to animal nature, I'd like to 
mention a few observations. It's evident that most 
animals can do rather complicated and seemingly dif- 
ficult things without learning — without any experi- 
ence. Last summer I visited a man in Mitteneaque 
who raised poultry, and I saw a hundred chicks 
which had been hatched out in an incubator. They 
had no one to teach them. There was no mother-hen 
for them to imitate, but they could eat and drink and 
run and jump and preen themselves and scratch. 
They would run and dodge when they got a worm. 
The young roosters, only a week or so old, would 
have mock fights. Strange as it may seem, they 
could all swim, too. The man had noticed it in the 
case of one who jumped out of a basket in which he 
was carrying it across a bridge, and had tried others. 
In fact, a ten-days* old chick can do a good many 
more things than a ten days' old baby. Animals evi- 
dently are like us, in doing some things without hav- 
ing to learn them." 

'*! was wondering, too, when mother spoke first, if 
we didn't have some of these instinctive acts, as I be- 
lieve some one called them, in common with some 
of the lower animals. All of you who've lived on 
a farm know that young lambs or calves will run after 
anything which starts away from them slowly, and 
run away from anything which comes toward them 
fast. Now, haven't you lots of times seen a baby run 
away when you try to catch him, with no real reason, 



The Human Nature Club 25 

and we all know how they toddle after us if we are 
going away from them. It seems like a sort of gift 
common to human beings and some animals. And 
about the fooling with things and grabbing them and 
sticking them in the mouth, isn't a monkey just like 
a baby in that? I never thought of it before, but 
a monkey acts just about the same way toward any 
new thing that a baby does. Whatever meaning you 
give to the thing, it seems to me to be a sure fact, 
and one worth thinking about.*' 

''I see," said Mr. Henshaw, "that we're likely to 
stir up more questions than we do answers; but I'm 
glad of it, for if we get our minds full of questions, 
we'll be on the lookout for facts. What is it, Miss 
Clark?" 

*'I don't see why if we never learn these things, 
we don't do them all when we're only a day or so old. 
But we don't." 

"I think that points to a very important fact, but 
I don't think it's any argument to prove that we do 
really learn those things," replied Arthur. ''I watched 
four of that man's chicks for a week, and they didn't 
scratch till they were several days old, yet I know 
they didn't learn to do it. When the time came they 
just did it. And it was so with Helen's walking. It 
seems to me it just is a fact that when the body or 
brain develops to a certain extent we do these things. 
Some things, like breathing and suckling, we do at 
the very start. Some things, like reaching and walk- 
ing, come later. It seems to me that the habit of 
collecting objects, which comes later still, comes to 
children without their learning it from any one. It 



l6 The Human Nature Club 

seems to me that we just have to grant that these 
unlearned acts — instinctive acts, as we've called 
them — may come at birth or be delayed for a consid- 
erable while. Isn't that so?" 

All agreed with Arthur, Mr. Elkin remarking that 
falling in love seemed to him a fine example of a 
delayed instinct. 

'^Falling in love, at least the first time, would be 
an unlearned thing all the same," he retorted when 
the company laughed at his example. 

'*If I may have one more word," said Arthur, **rd 
like to ask whether these inborn abilities may not die 
out if they aren't exercised. Chicks naturally follow 
a hen, but if they don't have any chance to follow 
a hen in the first ten or twelve days, why then they 
won't go near one, much less follow it, if you do give 
them the chance. The act or instinct, or whatever 
you please to call it, has died out. Are ours that 
same way, I wonder?" 

No one seemed to have any evidence, and it was 
suggested that in the future eyes be kept open for 
that sort of fact. 

'*I am interested to see," said Miss Clark, "what 
sort of thing in the brain corresponds to these un- 
learned acts. How is the connection between the 
nerve-strings made in these cases?" 

"It wouldn't have to be made at all, would it?" 
replied Mr. Tasker, after a moment or so. "If we do 
these acts without having to learn them, it would 
mean that our brains had a lot of ready-made connec- 
tions. They would be like a lot of permanent private 
telephone connections, or like nickel-in-the-slot ma- 



The Human Nature Club 27 

chines. The sight of a small moving object stirs up 
the brain to cause the movement of reaching for it, 
just as the nickel makes the machine turn out 
a package of gum. If learning to do a thing when 
you see or hear or feel or think of something means 
that you build up a connection of some sort in the 
brain, doesn't doing a thing without any learning 
when you see or hear something mean that the con- 
nection is already built up for you, Miss Clark?'* 

*'Yes, that seems right." 

**It is now about time for this meeting to adjourn, 
and I therefore call for propositions as to what facts 
we shall look out for during the coming week. 
I take it for granted that we'll all bear in mind the 
questions discussed to-night and try to apply what 
we've learned. I myself would suggest that we notice 
any new thing that we do learn, and see how we 
learn it. I know that there are a lot of interesting 
questions about queer things in human nature, and 
I hope we can later get to the bottom of them, but 
I believe that we'd better see through the simple 
things first." 

*'I move that the chairman's suggestion be adopted, 

and that our next topic be, 'How did I learn to 

whatever the thing was?' " said Mr. Tasker. 

The proposition was accepted, and the company 
broke up. 

NOTES BY THE EDITOR. 

We inherit certain connections between nerve-cells which 
make us act in certain circumstances in definite ways, without 
our learning how, or thinking about the matter at all, or know- 
ing what we are going to do. Our inherited constitution mak^s 



28 The Human Nature Club 

us breathe and suckle and smile and reach for things and walk 
and be afraid in the dark, just as it makes us sleep and digest 
food and grow. We call such unlearned activities, instincts, or 
7iative reactions. Such activities may appear before birth or at 
birth or be delayed till after birth. They may be transitory, 
that is, may stay for a while and then disappear if not exercised 
and rendered habitual. Some of them we have in common 
with a great many of the lower animals. Some of them are 
peculiar to the human race. On the basis of these instinctive 
acts develop all our later acquisitions. 

An interesting account of them may be found in Wm. 
James's " Talks to Teachers on Psychology," pp. 45-63. 



CHAPTER III 

DIFFERENT WAYS OF LEARNING 

**Mr. Elkin, " said Miss Atwell, who was acting as 
chairman, *'what have you learned this week, and how 
did you learn it?" 

'Well, Miss Chairman, in order to be sure to 
have something to report to-night I took this chance 
of learning something that I should have learned long 
ago — to ride a bicycle! So far as I can recall the 
somewhat perturbed state of mind that I was in dur- 
ing the attempts, it was something like this. I'll 
make use in my description of a record which my 
wife kept at the time. I tried an hour each morning. 
The first morning I would sometimes fall over at the 
start; sometimes describe a short curve and then 
flop; sometimes go along with the front wheel wob- 
bling for twenty or thirty feet. I poked with my feet, 
and pulled this way and that with my hands, without 
much, if any, idea of what I was doing. I felt good 
when I kept going; that was about all. The farthest 
I went that morning was about forty feet. My wife 
says that I made thirty-eight attempts, rode about 
two hundred and fifty feet in all, fell over at the start 
nineteen times, had eleven of those meteoric curved 
dashes, and eight rides — short and zigzag ones, how- 
ever. This morning I rode five miles, falling off only 
four times, and then with fair provocation in the 
shape of a stone, a rut, a lot of sand and a terrifying 

29 



30 



The Human Nature Club 



milk-cart. All I can say about the progress from the 
first attempts to my present skill is that the useless 
jerks and pulls of arms and pokes of legs and bendings 
of the body gradually died out, and the right way of 
holding and pushing and sitting became the regular 
thing. My wife's records of the number of tumbles 
each day, the longest trip made, etc., show that 

pretty clearly. 

'*I learned just 
by the try, try again 
method, with no ex- 
planations from 
any one and nobody 
to watch. Certain 
acts which kept 
me a - going, and 
so were satisfac- 
tory, seemed just to 
gradually become 
the natural acts, whereas at first they were only sel- 
dom done. I didn't think out how to do it, or 
about what my hands and feet were doing. What I 
thought of was just of keeping a-going. I've made 
some pictures which to me at least represent what 
happened. Let (in Figure 5) the line A B represent 
the feelings of sitting on a bicycle plus the desire to 
ride. At first these feelings lead to a lot of acts or 
movements represented by the other lines. Some of 
these make you fall or go crooked; others, which I'll 
represent by a double line, make you keep going and 
going the way you wish. After a lot of trials, these 
acts get connected with the feelings represented by 




Fig. 5. 



The Human Nature Club 



31 




B 



A — B, so that you do just those. When you've learned 
completely, your behavior is represented by a figure 
like this (Figure 6), where the connections leading to 
all the useless acts have been obliterated and the con- 
nection between the feelings of being on a wheel and 
the acts that keep you on have been strengthened. 
Learning to ride a bicycle seems to be the selection 
of one set of acts 
and the connection 
of them with a cer- 
tain situation, and 
the mere satisfac- 
tion of success T 

seems to be what 
does the selecting 
and connecting." 

'* Excuse me for 
interrupting," said 
Mr. Henshaw, *'but 
isn't it largely in that way that we learn to hit a 
mark with a rifle-bullet or to dive? We just try 
and try, and the pleasure we get from successes 
stamps them in." 

''I learned to have a decent 'touch' in playing the 
piano pretty much in that way, I think," added Miss 
Fairbanks; ''but you go ahead, Mr. Elkin." 

''I hadn't anything more to say. I've talked too 
long already." 

'*I call on Miss Clark to speak next. You 
haven't said much in the meetings so far, Helen." 

"I shan't now, I'm afraid. All I've learned that 
was really a thing by itself was a new dumb-bell drill 




Fig. 6. 



3^ The Human Nature Club 

in the women's class at the gymnasium. I learned 
the movements just by seeing them done, by imita- 
tion. They were very simple, and I didn't have to 
use the trial and error sort of method that Mr. Elkins 
did in learning to ride a wheel. I just watched the 
leader, and did as she did." 

^'Perhaps I'd better insert my observation here, 
too, for in my case the learning was to pronounce the 
French an^ on, ain, etc., and it was a case of imitat- 
ing." 

"Was it, really?" said Mr. Tasker. ''It seems to 
me that you combined Mr. Elkin's stamping-in of the 
successful acts with Miss Clark's imitation. You 
had the sound the teacher gave for a guide, and you 
made a lot of attempts. When you hit the right sound, 
your memory used the model to stamp it in, but you 
didn't learn how to make the sounds just from hearing 
and seeing them made, as Miss Clark learned the 
movements. Isn't there a difference between direct 
imitation and imitation where one uses the trial and 
error method plus the help of a model?" 

No one objected to this distinction, and Mr. Tasker 
was called on next. 

*'I told you not to expose me," said he. *'The 
sad fact is, friends, that I haven't learned anything 
this week, not even my Sunday-school lesson; I've 
been too busy getting a class started in geometry. 
However, I've certainly observed in others methods 
of learning which differ from the three mentioned so 
far. For example, I asked a boy to get me a test- 
tube. He said he didn't know where they were. 
I said: 'You go downstairs to room D, and look in the 



The Human Nature Club 23 

first case on your right side as you go in, in the third 
drawer from the bottom.' He succeeded all right, 
showing that he had learned where to find the test- 
tube just from my explanation. He didn't have to 
make a lot of efforts, one of which gradually became 
assured, as Mr. Elkin did. If I'd sent him ten times 
afterward he would have done just the same. He 
learned how to find the thing, once for all, by seeing 
through the situation. He didn't have any one to 
imitate. He learned by getting the idea of what to 
do and remembering it. So I should say we had 
three main ways so fan Some things we learn by 
trial and occasional success, which gradually becomes 
assured; some things by imitation, the model being 
either directly influential or working to direct our 
trials; some things we learn by getting ideas — /. e., 
from explanations." 

"I fancy my report is like Mr. Tasker's, and I'd 
better put it in now," said Mr. Henshaw. "I learned 
how to keep off book agents this week. A friend told 
me that during three weeks while his children were 
sick and a 'diphtheria' sign was on the door, he was 
bothered by no tramps or book agents. I'm going 
to try it. My friends will learn by 'explanation' that 
the sign does not mean real diphtheria, while the 
book agents will have to depend on 'trial and occa- 
sional success,' and the result should be very satisfac- 
tory. But speaking seriously, I think we ought to 
notice that learning by having ideas of things covers 
a tremendous lot of cases. We learn arithmetic and 
geography; how to add and subtract and go to places 
and to avoid poisons; we learn the news; we learn 



34 The Human Nature Club 

how to keep books; how to play chess and such 
games — in fact, a host of things by just getting cer- 
tain ideas of things and acts. The model in imita- 
tion may just give us the idea of what to do or of how 
to do it. A person can 'explain' by an act as well as 
by words, and pure imitation would occur only in 
cases where the person did the thing without an idea 
of it by the mere force of witnessing the act in 
another — in cases, for instance, where a child gets St. 
Vitus' dance from being with a child who has it. But 
I'm keeping Mrs. Elkin and Mrs. Ralston from telling 
their experiences." 

'^Mine was of the 'idea' sort. Mr. Elkin wanted 
me to be able to open his safe, so he wrote out the 
combination, and I learned it because I didn't want 
to bother about saving the paper." 

"Mine was of the 'idea' sort of learning, too. In 
connection with plans for an entertainment I had to 
know how much one hundred and twenty-eight times 
twelve and one-half cents was. I started to multiply 
it out, when Laura Keswick, who was with me, said 
right off, 'It's sixteen dollars.' I asked her how she 
got it so quickly, and she said, 'Why, that's easy. 
Twelve and a half is one-eighth of one hundred, so 
you just divide your one hundred and twenty-eight by 
eight.' I had to confess that I'd lived fifty-three 
years without having that idea of doing such an 
example in that easy way." 

"Arthur, you are the only one left to report." 

"The only new thing that I've learned how to do 
is to be able to tell the prices of eighty-two articles 
that our firm sells, without looking the matter up. It 



The Human Nature Club 35 

was, of course, just a very simple case of getting 
ideas, of remembering each price in connection with 
the name of the article. When I receive an order for 
any one of them now. the idea of the price comes up 
in my mind, so that I make out the bill correctly. 
But I'd like to call the club's attention to some facts 
I've been thinking of while listening to the others 
to-night. Many things that we learn to do involve 
a 7nixture of the methods we've observed. When, for 
instance, we learn to play croquet, you start with 
a number of ideas that you get from explanation or 
observation, but you learn to aim correctly and to hit 
just so hard in any particular shot, from trial and 
gradual improvement. Moreover, I think you often 
unconsciously imitate the actions of other players. 
Learning to sing, also, is partly due to ideas, partly 
to gradually stamping in the right acts and abandon- 
ing the wrong ones, partly to merely imitating your 
teacher unconsciously. 

My second point is that dogs and cats learn only 
by the gradual trial and success way. At least, 
I remember reading an article in the Popular Science 
Monthly which seemed to mean that. If you'll wait 
a minute, I'll get it and read part of it to you. 

'' 'So far we have seen that when put in situations 
calculated to call forth any thinking powers which 
they possess, the animals* conduct still shows no 
signs of anything beyond the accidental formation of 
an association between the sight of the interior of the 
box and the impulse to a certain act, and the subse- 
quent complete establishment of this association 
because of the power of pleasure to stamp in any pro- 



^6 The Human Nature Club 

cess which leads to it. We have also seen that sam- 
ples of the acts which have been supposed by advo- 
cates of the reason theory to require reasoning for 
their accommplishment turn out to be readily accom- 
plished by the accidental success of instinctive 
impulses. The decision that animals do not possess 
the higher mental processes is reinforced by several 
other lines of experiment — for example, by some 
experiments on imitation.' ^ 

"Apparently the chief difference between human 
nature and dog or cat nature is that we have the idea 
method of learning. If so, we ought to study it more 
carefully.'* 

''Isn't the idea method of learning, as we've called 
it, a pretty big affair? We've noticed rather simple 
cases, but when you come to think of it, almost all of 
our school education, business training, original dis- 
coveries, scientific progress — in fact, almost all of 
civilization, which, I take it, means learning how to do 
a lot of things that savage peoples don't know how to 
do, is dependent on just getting certain ideas. We 
ought to notice just how we get these ideas. Why 
not observe for next time what happens when one 
acquires an idea, what causes it, etc.?" 

''Good for you, Henshaw," replied Arthur; "but 
I'm doubtful about our getting the thing settled by 
our next meeting. I fancy we have a year's work 
before us if we're to observe everything possible 
about the way we learn to do things by thinking. 
We'll have to see how we remember and infer and 
guess and prove, and why we make mistakes and why 

* Popular Science Monthly, August, 1899. 



The Human Nature Club 37 

we fail to remember and infer, etc. It will be a fine 
thing to watch, though, especially for you teachers. 
But it's a complicated affair, simple as it looks. 
Taking Mrs. Ralston's instance, let us suppose that 
some one reads, 'In multiplying by certain numbers — 
e. g., 12^, 16^, ssys — it is often convenient to add 
two ciphers and divide by 8, 6, 3, etc. ' In order that 
this idea shall really bring about the proper results in 
his future conduct, he has to see the words or hear 
them, and we'll have to see how our senses work. He 
has to remember them, so weUl have to study what sort 
of things we remember best, how we remember at all, 
etc. He has to understand the meaning of each word 
and follow the points, and we'll have to observe our 
ways of comprehending things, see what they depend 
on, etc. He has to apply the thing to a particular 
case. It's wonderful how the common things that 
we take for granted are full of questions the minute 
you start in looking to see just what happens and 
why. There ought to be some books that tell about 
these things. Don't they teach about your senses 
and memory and that sort of thing in college, Tasker?" 
'*Yes, they try to. The science of psychology is 
supposed to discuss just such things, but judging 
from the books I read in college, I should say that 
it would perhaps be better, and would surely be much 
more fun, for us to keep on making our own observa- 
tions and trying to think out what they mean, rather 
than to read any such books, at least for the pres- 
ent. My chum of sophomore year is teaching psychol- 
ogy in a college now, and if we get over our depth I 
can. write and ask him to tell us where to find out 



38 The Human Nature Club 

about the question in books. Besides, there's more in 
human nature than there is in the psychology books, 
I fancy. So let's keep on noticing human folks' 
behavior and discussing it, just as we have so far." 

**What shall be our plan for the next meeting, 
then?" said Miss Atwell. "Shall we just keep our 
eyes open in general, or shall we observe ourselves 
and other people with some definite question in 
mind?" 

'^Hadn't we better do both, but plan to talk about 
only some one question? My wife and I find some 
bit of human nature to talk over almost every day 
now that we've started to keep a lookout, and we're 
saving all our observations until the club gets around 
to some topic that they bear on." 

*'I think Mr. and Mrs. Elkin have the right idea, 
and I suggest that we begin the study of the *idea' 
way of learning by trying to see what part our senses 
play in the matter, how many of the differences in 
human nature are due to differences in hearing, see- 
ing, feeling, etc." 

NOTES BY THE EDITOR. 

The method of learning by the selection of successes from 
among a lot of acts is the most fundamental method of learning, 
and is common to many animals besides man. The human 
infant learns in that way before he begins to imitate at all or to 
have ideas about things. We may take Mr. Elkin's drawings 
as representing in a rough way what does happen in the brain. 
The gradual increase in success means a gradual strengthen- 
ing of one set of nerve-connections, and a gradual weakening 
of others. This method of learning may be called the method of 
trial and error, or of trial and success, or (from its importance 
in animal life), the animal method of learning. 



The Human Nature Club 39 

The cause of such strengthening and weakening is the 
resuhing pleasure in one case and discomfort in the others. 

"Any act which is done in a certain situation and brings 
pleasure tends to be associated with that situation, and to be 
done when one is in that situation again. Any act which is 
done in a certain situation and brings discomfort tends to be 
dissociated from that situation and not to be done again." 

Things which we would learn by the idea method, anii^ials 
learn by this "trial and success" method. For instance, if we 
make a pen, as shown in Fig. A, and put a chick, say six days 
old, in at y^, it is confronted by 
a situation which is, briefly, " the 
sense-impression or feeling of 
the confining surfaces, an un- 
comfortable feeling due to the 
absence of other chicks and of 
food, and perhaps the sense- 
impressions of the chirping of 
the chicks outside." It reacts 
to this situation by running 
around, making loud sounds and Fig. a. 

jumping at the walls. When 

it jumps at the walls, it has uncomfortable feelings of effort; 
when it runs to B, or C, or Z>, it has a continuation of the feel- 
ings of the situation just described; when it runs to E, it gets 
out, feels the pleasure of being with the other chicks, of the 
taste of food, of being in its usual habitat. If from time to time 
you put it in again, you find that it jumps and runs to B, C, and 
D less and less often, until finally its only act is to run to Z>, E, 
and out. It has, to use technical psychological terms, formed 
an association between the sense-impression or situation due to 
its presence at A and the act of going to E. In common lan- 
guage it has learned to go to ^when put at A — has learned the 
way out. The decrease in the useless runnings and jumping 
and standing still finds a representative in the decreasing 
amount of time taken by the chick to escape. The two chicks 
that formed this particular association, for example, averaged 
one about three and the other about four minutes for their first 




40 The Human Nature Club 

five trials, but came finally to escape invariably within five or 
six seconds. 

It will be well now to examine a more ambitious perform- 
ance than the mere discovery of the proper path by a chick. If 
we take a box twenty by fifteen by twelve inches, replace its 
cover and front side by bars an inch apart, and make in this 
front side a door arranged so as to fall open when a wooden 
button inside is turned from a vertical to a horizontal position, 
we shall have means to observe such. A kitten, three to six 
months old, if put in this box when hungry, a bit of fish being 
left outside, reacts as follows:^ It tries to squeeze through 
between the bars, claws at the bars and at loose things in and 
out of the box, reaches its paws out between the bars and bites 
at its confining walls. Some one of all these promiscuous 
clawings, squeezings, and bitings turns round the wooden but- 
ton, and the kitten gains freedom and food. By repeating the 
experience again and again, the animal gradually comes to 
omit all the useless clawings, etc., and to manifest only the 
particular impulse {e.g., to claw hard at the top of the button 
with the paw, or to push against one side of it with the nose) 
which has resulted successfully. It turns the button round 
without delay whenever put in the box. It has formed an asso- 
ciation between the situation '* confinement in a box of a certain 
appearance" and the impulse to the act of clawing at a certain 
part of that box in a certain definite way. Popularly speaking, 
it has learned to open a door by turning a button. To the 
uninitiated observer the behavior of the six kittens that thus 
freed themselves from such a box would seem wonderful and 
quite unlike their ordinary accomplishments of finding their 
way to their food, beds, etc., but the reader will realize that the 
activity is of just the same sort as that displayed by the chick 
in the pen. A certain situation arouses by virtue of accident 
or, more often, instinctive equipment, certain impulses and cor- 
responding acts. One of these happens to be an act appro- 
priate to secure freedom. It is stamped in in connection with 
that situation. Here the act is "clawing at a certain spot" 

^Confinement alone, apart from hunger, causes similar reactions, though 
not so pronounced. 



The Human Nature Club 41 

instead of *' running to E,*' and is selected from a far greater 
number of useless acts.^ 

Concerning learning by imitation I have nothing to add to 
the club's observations. We do learn by imitation either 
directly or by a combination v/ith the method just described. 

As Mr. Henshaw says, the bulk of human activities are 
directed by ideas of one sort or another. This method of learn- 
ing, the animals, with the possible exception of the monkeys, 
hardly possess. It is peculiarly human. 

'Edward Thorndike, Woods Holl Biological Lectures, 1899. 



CHAPTER IV 

OUR SENSES 

Mr. Henshaw opened the fourth meeting of the 
Human Nature Club by saying: "Arthur was telling 
me Wednesday of some general notions of his about 
the best way to look at human nature, and I took the 
liberty as prospective chairman of this meeting of 
asking him to prepare a sort of scheme showing his 
ideas. If he will tell us his view now, we can criti- 
cise it to our heart's content, and then go on to our 
own observations." 

'*Mr. Chairman, I have tried to settle a few points 
in my own mind, with the help' of a book or two that 
I found in the Springfield Library.^ The life of 
a human being seems to be a series of acts. We are 
in circumstances or surroundings or situations that 
change, and we act — or, to use a more exact word, 
react — to these situations by movements of our body 
or limbs, or of some part of us. All that we really 
do to the world about us and to other people is to 
make some movement. Giving a million dollars to 
a hospital is really just making certain movements 
with your fingers, resulting in your signature on 
a check. And the only importance of our thoughts 
and feelings and education and characters is that they 
make us do certain things in certain circumstances, 
make us react in certain ways to certain situations. 

^The book was James's "Talks to Teachers on Psychology." 

42 



The Human Nature Club 43 

I mean by a 'situation* just the sights, sounds, 
tastes, etc., which you feel at the time. Give me any 
fact of human life that you please, and it can be 
expressed as a reaction to a situation. Give me any- 
thing in human nature, and its importance will con- 
sist in its influence on our movements." 

'*Then you would say that knowing arithmetic is 
important because it leads us when we hear, *How 
much are nine times eighteen?' to move our throat 
muscles so that we say, 'One hundred and sixty-two,' 
or to make with our fingers the movements producing 
162 or one hundred and sixty-two. You would say 
that knowing the alphabet really means the tendency 
to react to the request, 'Give the letters of the alpha- 
bet,' by saying or writing 'a, b, c,' etc." 

"Yes; that's it. And the difference between any 
two people will be really that they react differently 
to the same situations. For instance, the difference 
between a thief and an honest man is that one reacts 
by taking things when the other would react by leav- 
ing them alone. The difference between Republicans 
and Democrats is that one class take a ballot which 
the other class refuse, go to a lot of speeches, read 
a sort of papers which the other class would avoid, 
move their hands together in clapping at a sentence 
which the other class would hiss, etc. For practical 
purposes, living equals reacting to multitudinous situ- 
ations; by a man's character or nature we mean his 
ways of reacting." 

"I don't quite see that that is universally true. 
Don't we have lots of thoughts and impulses that 
make up a part of our lives, but yet exert no infiu- 



44 The Human Nature Club 

ence on our actions? For instance, don't mothers 
have love for their children that they don't show? 
May not a boy do just the same things in school as 
another boy, and yet be of a different character? 
I always thought human nature — character — was 
something in us which might be there and yet not 
express itself in acts.'* 

"Haven't you neglected my words for practical 
purposes^ Miss Clark? If the mother's love didn't 
result in any act, if it never led her to do anything, 
no one except herself would be any different because 
of it. No one but herself could ever know that it 
existed. And so of any increase or decrease in its 
amount. I'll agree that there is room for difference 
of opinion, but I think that if we knew all a person's 
reactions to different situations, we should know the 
person's real nature. Your boy may perhaps do just 
the same things in school, but if he's really of a dif- 
ferent character, I'm sure that out of school, and 
later on in school, he will show the difference in his 
actions. I don't think we have a right to imagine 
any sort of thing which mysteriously exists in us, and 
call it character. All we can know about it is its 
results on conduct, and these are just that the person 
reacts in certain ways to certain situations." 

"It is fair to say in Arthur's defense that all the 
human nature facts we've discussed so far are facts 
describable by his phrase. Listen, for instance, to 
this. Our habits are just cases of similar reactions 
to the same situation recurring a number of times. 
We've learned also that we could react to a situation 
successfully without knowing much about \X\^ situation; 



The Human Nature Club 45 

that we can make certain reactions without learning 
how; that in other cases we learn how to react prop- 
erly by trial and success, by imitation, and by getting 
an idea of the reaction desired. I've used his words, 
you see, to describe the facts we've been studying, 
and they seem to fit. Don't those sentences sound 
clear and true? I suggest that we provisionally 
accept Arthur's way of describing human life until 
we find some fact which conflicts with it. Can you 
just summarize it, Arthur, and show how it may help 
us in discussing the use of our senses?" 

**I should repeat that human life consisted of 
a multitude of reactions to situations. By a situation 
we mean what is around us, what happens to us; by 
a reaction, what we do, what movements we make. 
Our thoughts and feelings are an important part of 
our nature, for they have a share in deciding what 
reactions we will make. For instance, two men are 
walking down the street, one feeling hungry, the other 
not. The feeling will make one react to a restaurant 
by going in, while the other passes by. Our senses, 
in particular, make an enormous difference in the way 
we react, for if we don't see or hear or feel or taste 
or smell a thing, we won't react to it at all. Thus, 
a deaf man who is run over by a train is killed be- 
cause he failed to react by getting off the track, the 
situation being 'train coming.' His failure was due 
to his failure to 'sense' the situation. In order to 
react properly to any situation, we have to feel it. 
Our sensations serve as the starting-point. If we 
didn't have eyes, ears, skin, etc., which were influ- 
enced by the outside world, by the situations in which 



46 The Human Nature Club 

we are, we should be unable to adapt our actions to 
circumstances at all. As to learning by getting 
ideas, we couldn't learn, because no one would have 
any means of communicating an idea to us." 

*'I think this general outline will help us in describ- 
ing our observations," said the chairman. "But 
first, are there any remarks concerning what we've 
said so far?" 

**I think, perhaps, my observation ought to come 
first," said Miss Fairbanks, ''because if we all agree 
that we can adapt our conduct to the outside world 
in so far as we have sensations, it seems worth while 
to see how far our sensations do parallel outside 
events, and how far people differ. I don't mean dif- 
ferences due to the absence of a sense entirely, as is 
the case with people blind or deaf or without the 
sense of smell, but differences in the range of a single 
sense. Now I've noticed that old people cannot, as 
a general thing, hear some very high notes which 
young people can. I remember, too, that one of my 
teachers at the conservatory told me that individuals 
varied in the range of tones they could hear. He said 
that the majority of people could not hear any tone 
much over six octaves above middle C, but that some 
individuals could heartbnes an octave or more higher; 
that is, the situation 'air vibrating forty thousand 
times per second' would be felt and so reacted to by 
some and not by others." 

'^There's another kind of failure to get sensations, 
apart from general failure in a sense," said the chair- 
man. **About two years ago I went to see my friend 
Arbuthnot, an army surgeon. When I reached his 



The Human Nature Club 47 

office I found him sitting by a table on which were 
a lot of different colored skeins of yarn, eight or ten 
shades of each color and of gray. 

*' 'Are you mending socks or knitting an afghan?' 
said I. 

'' 'Wait and you'll see/ said he, and rang a bell. 
In came a recruit. (The surgeon was stationed at an 
enlisting station.) 'Pick out all the colors that are 
shades of that one,' said the surgeon to him, pointing 
to a green skein. The man passed this and other 
tests successfully, and was sent on. 'We test them 
for color-blindness,' said my friend. 'About four 
men in a hundred can't tell some shades of red and 
green. They don't see reds and greens as we do. 
Now, in the case of a soldier reporting signals, or an 
engineer running his train in accordance with differ- 
ent colored lights, such an inability might make 
a tremendous difference. If an engineer failed to see 
the redness in a light and reacted as if it were just an 
ordinary lantern, he might wreck a whole train.' 

"Arbuthnot told me that all engineers on the big 
roads were tested for color-blindness nowadays. It's 
odd, but only very, very rarely is a woman color- 
blind." 

"I used to know a young man that must be that 
way," said Miss Clark. "He was terribly slow at 
finding wild strawberries in the grass, and never 
could see a tree that had turned color early in the fall 
until you pointed right at it; and I remember that 
he'd call dresses brown when there was a lot of color 
in them. I never put the three things together 
before, but I suppose he must have been at least partly 



48 The Human Nature Club 

color-blind. It's too bad you didn't see a case at 
the surgeon's office." 

"But I did. Shall I take the time to tell you about 
it?" 

"Yes! Yes!" 

"Well, I had to wait over an hour, until Arbuth- 
not finished his office work, and during that time 
twelve men were tested. Eleven were all right, but 
one of them, though he got the bright shades of 
green all right, was very slow in finding the others, 
and didn't get them all. And he wasn't sure of some 
that he did pick out — at least, he'd hesitate. He 
would also pick out grays which had no green in them 
at all. That's quite enough about color-blindness, 
I'm sure, but let's keep our eyes open for some one 
who is color-blind, and then we can try the tests on 
him." 

There was a minute's silence, broken finally by 
Miss Atwell. 

"It strikes me that the facts mentioned so far 
show one general truth clearly — namely, that a per- 
son's senses only partially reveal the world to him, 
that the situation as he feels it is only a part of the 
real situation he is in. The color-blind person may 
be in the presence of green things, but he doesn't see 
the greenness. The old person may be in the pres- 
ence of air-vibrations making high tones, but he 
doesn't hear them. Persons lacking a whole sense 
miss one whole aspect of the world. And even those 
of us w^io have all our senses in perfect order, still do 
not feel all the facts of the world about us. For 
instance, we here would all feel the same whether 



The Human Nature Club 49 

there was an electric current passing through those 
telephone wires or not. That cnange in the outside 
world about us — /. ^. , the situation we are in — would 
make no difference in our sensations. All sorts of 
things may be happening around us that our few 
senses don't take account of." 

*'By the way," interrupted Miss Clark, *'I know 
of a man who can by the sense of smell tell which of 
his friends are in a room. You blindfold him and 
bring him into a room where there are three or four 
people of his acquaintance, and he rarely makes 
a mistake. I suppose he'd think we were smell-blind, 
so to speak." 

*'I was just going to say," said Miss Fairbanks, 
**that I believed there was something more to be said 
than that people differed in the range of sensations 
or in the lack of one sense or a part of one. I think 
they differ also in delicacy. In fact, I should think 
your friend differed from us in delicacy rather than in 
range. I've tried all of my pupils with a monochord 
at their first lesson by sounding a certain note and 
asking them to sound the same note. Some get very 
near it, within a tenth of a tone, while others are half 
a tone or more off." 

'*I remember a case where ability to feel small 
differences — delicacy of discrimination, I suppose we 
might call it — made a big difference in a man's reac- 
tion to a situation. I was in the office of a big tea 
importer at New York. 'I'll show you an easy way 
for a man to make ten dollars,* said he. 'Here are 
two samples of tea. I am offered both at the same 
price. Tell me v/hich to take,' and he put a pinch of 



50 The Human Nature Club 

each in a cup and added boiling water. I tasted both, 
and for my life couldn't see a bit of difference. 'No 
wonder they give you your choice!' I said; 'the tea 
is just the same.' 'Maybe it is,' said he, and rang 
a bell. The office boy appeared. 'Call Hopkins.' 

"When Hopkins entered my friend said, 'How 
about these teas here, both offered at forty-two?' 
Hopkins tasted each carefully, and then replied, 'This 
one is worth at least two cents more than the other.' 
He had reacted to a difference in the tastes that 
I could not feel at all, and had saved his employer 
some sixteen hundred dollars. He was making his 
living out of his ability to discriminate delicately." 

'*Why not try our own abilities," said Arthur. 
"I think I can see a handy way." 

"All right." "That's a good idea." "Go ahead," 
came from the company. 

Arthur left the room, to return in a few minutes 
with a lot of sheets of paper, each with a line drawn 
on it, and a number of pencils. These he distributed. 
"Attention, every one!" he said. "You are to draw 
on the second sheet I gave you, below this line, a line 
of exactly the same length as the sample, but you 
mustn't measure." 

Every one did this. Meanwhile, Arthur was pre- 
paring more sheets. These he gave out, and they 
repeated the experiment under his direction, each one 
doing it ten times. 

"What made you have us do it so many times?'* 
asked his mother, ''and what's this for, anyway?" 

"I'll show you in a minute. First, every one 
measure with these rulers," taking from a drawer 



The Human Nature Club 



51 



a box of rulers which Mr. Tasker had bought for the 
high school. ''The line you were trying to equal was 
in every case ten centimeters long. Make a note of 
how many millimeters wrong you were — e. g.^ if in 
a trial your line was three millimeters too long, call 
it +3; Jf three millimeters too short, — 3." Every 
one did so. 

"Let me see yours, Tasker, and shove over Helen's 
blackboard, will you. Let me have yours, too, 
mother. " 

He then put on the board Mr, Tasker's record and 
Mrs. Ralston's, as follows: 



Average 



Mr. Tasker. 


Mrs 


Ralston. 


Amount of Error. 


Amount of Error. 


-f- 3 millimeters 


+ 6m 


llimeters. 


+ 4 


+ 7 






+ 4 


+ 8 






+ 1 


+ 4 






+ 4 


+ 9 






+ 1 


+ 4 






+ 5 


+ 8 






" 


+ 9 






+ 6 


+ 7 






— 2 " 


+ 1 


" 


r, 30 mm. 


63 mm. 


3 " 


6.3 " 







*'Now, mother, you see why I asked you to do ten. 
It's to avoid mere chance and get a real estimate. 
On the whole, Tasker has a more accurate sensation 
of sight or movem.ent, or whatever guides one in draw- 
ing lengths; but if Ld taken only one record from 
each of you, I might have struck the worst of his — 
that is, the +5 — and the best of yours — that is, the 



52 The Human Nature Club 

+ 1, and then we'd have thought you were the more 
accurate. Everybody now get your average error." 

The club spent some time in comparing notes and 
seeing whose discrimination of lengths was most 
delicate. 

''I wonder why Mr. Tasker's is the best record/' 
said Mrs. Elkin. ''Do you suppose he just has that 
gift, or is it because of his training?" 

*'The tea-taster's and the music-professor's deli- 
cacy of discrimination was due to training, and prob- 
ably mine is, too. Probably in telling differences in 
taste, Mrs. Ralston would beat me all hollow. I used 
to suppose that it was just her fancy that led her to 
say, 'This pie is a bit sweeter than those I made last 
week.' I couldn't taste any difference, but now 
I really believe she did." 

*'I want to add again that just as there may be 
things in the world which we don't any of us feel any 
more than the blind man feels colors, so there are 
differences which none of us feel. Take these two 



Fig. 8. 



lines. I can't see that either is longer than the other, 
can you? No! Well, if we had a microscope and 



The Human Nature Club ^^ 

a very accurate measure we would probably find 
a difference. You have one, Arthur? Good.'* She 
took the little magnifying-glass and looked through 
it at the lines. Yes, one is really much longer. Now, 
if I should make them so that under this glass they 
looked just equal, by taking a more powerful lens I'd 
find them really unequal. Accuracy, exactness, in 
things is never an absolute thing, if you come to think 
of it, is it? When we say that a singer's notes are 
absolutely true, we really mean that we can't distin- 
guish any discord.'.' 

'*If nobody has anything more to say about differ- 
ences in the delicacy of discrimination, I'd like to tell 
of one more observation. Helen has a lot of colored 
papers that she plays with, and the other day I noticed 
that a piece of green paper when placed on red looks 
much greener, while red placed on green looks much 
redder. The green background will even make a gray 
look reddish, while the red background makes a gray 
look greenish. I wonder why that is." 

''I've noticed that effect of contrast, too," said 
Miss Fairbanks. 

''Red and blue-green are complementary colors," 
said Mr. Tasker; "that is, red and blue-green light, 
mixed together in the right proportions, make white 
light. Does your contrast effect come with yellow 
and indigo-blue, orange and blue?" 

"It does with orange and blue. I never tried the 
other. I will if I can find those colors among Helen's 
papers." 

"I can't explain it, but it's probably true of all 
complementary colors." 



54 The Human Nature Club 

*'Isn't there a similar contrast in taste? Moder- 
ately sweet coffee tastes very sweet if you drink 
it right after eating a sour orange.'* 

"Would it be fair to make the statement that we 
feel almost all things, not the way they are in them- 
selves, but the way they are in relation to their sur- 
roundings? Just as a word's meaning is always due 
to a certain context, so a thing's feeling is always due 
to its context, to what has come with it. Sometimes 
a thing is emphasized, as with colors on a contrasting 
background; sometimes it is weakened, as when sweet 
coffee seems no longer sweet after maple sugar." 

*'I suppose we'd better stop soon, and do the rest 
of our talking by twos and threes. But we'd better 
first decide about next time. If other things besides 
the sensations one has influence his reactions, we 
ought, perhaps, to notice them, what they are, and 
what there is to be known about them, before we go 
on to Christian Science or hypnotism, or why some 
children are very like their parents and others very 
different from them, though I understand there are 
lots of observations on these and other points waiting 
to be reported. " 

'*I quite agree with the chairman," said Mr. Tas- 
ker; **and I'd suggest that we all write out our obser- 
vations and drop them into a box here. Stories are 
likely to grow if we don't put them on paper. We'll 
get around to them sometime. For the present, 
let's get at ordinary human behavior till we can partly 
understand it. Then we can go on to these more 
exciting questions. I hear that Mr. Henshaw has 
about a hundred observations which convince him 



The Human Nature Club 55 

that the female half of human nature is of a lower 
order of intelligence. " 

''Not lower, but different," cried Mr. Henshaw. 

''I hope you'll produce them. We can have 
a debate. But for next time let's ask just, 'What 
else besides differences in their sensations makes 
differences in human beings' actions?' " 

With this understanding the meeting adjourned. 

NOTES BY THE EDITOR. 

The club's conclusions about sensations may be summarized 
as follows: 

Our actions depend on our sensations: 

(a) On the presence or absence of a sense. 

(d) On the presence or absence of some special function of 
a sense — ^. ^., green-vision. 

(c) On the range covered by a sense. 

(d) On the delicacy of discrimination. 

There may de differences without our feeling them, and the 
same real difference which when added to one thing makes us 
feel a difference, may not be enough to cause such a feelmg 
when added to another thing. Thus it would be easy to see a 
difference between a one candle-power and a two candle-power 
electric lamp, but impossible to tell the difference between a 
three hundred and a three hundred and one candle-power lamp. 

Finally, our sensation of a thing may depend not only on it, 
but also on its surroundings. 

We might say further about sensations, that in addition to 
sights, sounds, smells, tastes and touches, we have sensations 
of heat, of cold, sensations due to contraction of the muscles, 
strain of tendons, rubbing of joints, sensations of hunger, thirst, 
nausea, of changes of equilibrium, of pain, etc. 

Complex sensations vary in quality according to the simple 
sensations involved, and these simple sensations show (i) differ- 
ences between the senses — e. g., between a sound and a taste; 
(2) differences within the same sense — e. g., between red and 



$6 



The Human Nature Club 



blue. Some of these differences seem differences of more or 
less of the same thing — e. £-., loud and louder tones, bright and 
brighter light, etc. These may be called differences in inten- 
sity. 

These sensations are all due to action in the nerve-cells of 
the brain, aroused by action in the nerve-cells coming from our 
different sense organs. Nerve-cells starting in eye, ear, nose, 
mouth, skin, surfaces of the joints, tendons, glands, etc., run to 
the brain. At their outer ends they are set in action by light 
or heat or pressure or some other cause, and transmit this ac- 
tivity to their inner ends inside the brain, there making connec- 
tions with other cells. (See Figure 2, page 11.) Thus sensa- 
tions may cease for any one of several reasons. If a man's 
eyes are cut out, he can't see, because the outer ends of the 
nerve-cells are destroyed. If you leave his eyes unharmed, 
but cut the two bundles of nerve-cells going from his eyes to 
his brain, he can't see, because the activity can't be transmitted 
to the brain. The eye alone can't see. If you leave eye and 
nerve-cells, but cut out the place in the brain to which these 
cells go; i.e., cut out their connections with other cells, he can't 
see, because you've destroyed the connections. 

Successful use of one's senses may in the same way depend 
on the condition of the sense-organ, of the nerve-cells from it 
to the brain, and of the cells with which they there make con- 
nections. 

For a convenient account of our sensations, see (i) William 
James, " Briefer Course in Psychology," pp. 9-77 ; or (2) E, B. 
Titchener, "Outlines of Psychology," pp. 26-91, 



CHAPTER V 

THE INFLUENCE OF PAST EXPERIENCE 

''We saw last time," said Mrs. Ralston, ''that the 
way a person acted in any situation depended on the 
sensations he had. We were to have in mind this 
week the question, 'What else in a man besides the 
number and range and delicacy of his sense-powers 
influences the reactions he makes?' 

"I presume you've all thought of the case which 
I have in mind, but just let me read it to you, so we'll 
have the exact facts in mind. 

" 'A certain man went down from Jerusalem to 
Jericho and fell among thieves, which stripped him 
of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, 
leaving him half dead. And by chance there came 
down a certain priest that way; and when he saw him, 
he passed by on the other side. And likewise 
a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked 
on him, and passed by on the other side. But a cer- 
tain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was; 
and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, and 
went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil 
and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought 
him to an inn, and took care of him. '^ 

"Now the priest and the Levite probably saiv just 
what the Samaritan saw. Their sensations didn't 
differ fromx his, but their reactions differed tremen- 

'Luke X. 30-34, inclusive. 

57 



58 The Human Nature Club 

dously. And the difference was due to their charac- 
ters, their general attitude toward people. The same 
nerve commotions came from the eye to the brain in 
all three cases, but in two of the brains connections 
existed which caused the nerve commotions from the 
eyes to arouse acts of 'passing by on the other side,' 
sticking the nose up in the air and saying to oneself, 
'I wonder when I'll be made a member of the San- 
hedrin,' while in the Samaritan's brain connections 
existed which caused the pitiful sight to result in the 
acts described. If, as the doctor told us, we act as 
we do because of connections between certain sense- 
impressions and certain movements, I should say that 
a person's behavior in any situation depended not only 
on what sense-impressions he had, but also on what 
connections exist, on what sort of a brain the sense- 
impressions come to. I'm afraid this is all wrong, but 
I thought it all out and made Mr. Tasker tell me how 
to say it." 

''It's all right, so far as I can see, Mrs. Ralston. 
If you take our old telephone illustration, you could 
say that the result of a message depends not only on 
what the message is, but also on whom it goes to, 
what wire the first wire is connected with at the cen- 
tral office. In the case of the priest, connection was 
made w^ith Mr. Nose-elevating Muscle and with the 
office of the 'Pass by on the other side' Company. 

''I remember a rather funny instance of the way 
just the same sense-impression can produce entirely 
different reactions in people, according to their pre- 
vious education, which means, I suppose, according 
to the constitution of their brains, the connections 



The Human Nature Club 



59 



existing between nerve-cells. I once went with 
a friend to a spiritualistic seance. We sat beside two 
women, evidently believers. Various spooky forms 
emerged from the cabinet and spoke solemnly of the 
other world. The reactions of the women were bated 
breath and a tendency to tears. My 
reaction was extreme disgust mixed 
with a strong desire to laugh. What 
a person does in any situation evi- 
dently depends not only on the sensa- 
tions he has, but also on the make- 
up of the mind that has them.'' 

'*Not only what he does, but what 
he thinks, you might add," said Mrs. 
Elkin. ''I once gave ten cents to a 
little girl in the country, telling her 
to put it in the bank. Her thoughts 
in connection with the word 'bank' 
surely differed from mine, for she put 
the dime in the sand-bank by the 
road. If four of you will come into 
the other room, I'll try an experi- 
ment which I think will show how the 
effect of any sense-impression depends on the mind 
that receives it. " 

Mrs. Ralston, Mr. Elkin, and Arthur went out with 
her, and came back in a minute. Then Mrs. Elkin 
drew on the blackboard a figure like figure 9. 

Mrs. Ralston, Mr. Elkin and Arthur smiled appre- 
ciatively, while the others seemed very much puzzled. 

*'I suppose you folks are wondering what makes 
them smile, while you feel simply mystified. The 



J) 



Fig. 9. 



6o The Human Nature Club 

only difference is that I supplied their minds with 
a bit of information, built up some connections be- 
tween their cells, I dare say. Now, I'll do the same 
for you. Listen and look at the figure. An artist 
once said that he could with three lines portray a sol- 
dier entering a house, followed by his dog." 

The others now had their turn at enjoying the 
drawing. Mrs. Elkin continued: "I think that is 
rather a pretty instance of how just the same thing 
may arouse totally different thoughts according to 
the nature of the mind that sees it." 

'*Yes; that's very good. In fact, I think our 
point is now entirely clear, but I've thought up an 
imaginary story that I want to inflict on you. In 
New Orleans, at a theater, two men sat side by side. 
One was the president of the St. Clair Trust Company, 
another owned a block near the river. A man rushes 
in and cries out, 'The banks are giving way!' The 
first man rushes out to borrow money, the second to 
hire laborers. " 

''That's just my story in another form," declared 
Mrs. Elkin. "You're plagiarizing." 

"Well, it's a good illustration, anyway." 

"May I try to put all these facts into a few gen- 
eral statements?" said Mr. Tasker. "How is this? 
What we think or feel or do in any situation depends, 
first of all, on whether we feel the situation itself, on 
how our senses act, but it also depends on what ideas 
or acts the sensations arouse. Now the latter depend 
on our mental constitution, on our knowledge and 
habits, and these depend on our previous life. So 
that what we think or feel or do at any time depends 



The Human Nature Club 6i 

partly on all that we have thought and felt and done 
in the past. If we refer all this to the way our brains 
work, we shall say that our thoughts and feelings and 
acts are dependent, first of all, on what action goes 
on in the cells coming from eye, ear, etc., but also 
upon what sort of action this causes in the cells within 
the brain itself and the cells going out to the muscles. 
Now, here the whole previous life of these cells will 
make a difference. Just the same eye-action may 
make two brains act differently, because those two 
brains have acquired different make-ups. The same 
nickel may cause one machine to give out a piece of 
gum, another machine a piece of candy, because the 
machines are different. The result depends on the 
machine as well as the nickel, the brain as well as 
the eye or ear." 

"I object to that statement on the ground of 
incompleteness. You talk as if all the cell-connec- 
tions that had ever been made, all the knowledge 
and habits that a man had acquired during all his life, 
made a difference in the way he reacted to everything. 
But that isn*t so. Mr. Elkin is a Presbyterian and in 
the shoe business. Miss Fairbanks is a Methodist 
and a music-teacher. I'm not anything in the church 
line and edit a paper. Yet by and by, when the 
chairman says this meeting is adjourned, we will all 
react in about the same way. Our vastly different 
previous mental lives won't make any difference. 
I write on the board, ^ Homines pontes faciiint,' The 
thing which decides what thoughts we will have in this 
situation — namely, seeing those chalk-marks — isn't 
our religious or business or political nature, but 



62 



The Human Nature Club 



just the presence or absence of a knowledge of 
Latin. 

People may react alike if they are alike in a certain 
system of thinking which is concerned, even though 
they are vastly different in other respects. I say, 
'How much are eight times five?' and five thousand 
people may react alike, and yet be of vastly different 
mental make-ups. On the other hand, two men may 

have thought and acted 
alike on ninety-nine per 
cent of the world's ques- 
tions, but if one of them 
happens never to have 
learned arithmetic, their re- 
actions to that question 
will be very different, for 
it is only that part of their 
mental constitution that's 
concerned. " 

''You're quite right. 
The mind, the brain, is, of course, a tremendously 
complex affair, and not all of it is at work at once 
in any single situation." 

''I have still another addition to make. The very 
same person may to the very same sensations react 
differently on different occasions, according to what 
thoughts are temporarily uppermost in his mind. 
Let me follow Arthur's example, and experiment on 
you. Please imagine a pyramid with the tip cut off 
sticking out at you from the board while I draw." 
He then drew a figure like figure lo and quickly erased 
it. *'What did you see?" 




Fig. 10. 



The Human Nature Club 6^ 

'*A pyramid, of course." 

**Was its small end sticking out toward you?*' 

'*Yes.'* 

**Well! Now imagine an open box, shaped like the 
pyramid, but with the small end away from you, while 
I draw again.'* He then drew the same figure again. 
''What did you see?" 

"The box you told us about, of course; that's 
what you drew." 

*'Was its small end away from you?" 

''Yes." 

"Very good. I drew exactly the same figure in 
each case, but one sees it as sticking out or as hol- 
low or even as a flat surface, just according to which 
idea you have uppermost in your mind. I noticed 
the thing I just tried on you years ago. It seems as 
if we could have certain cells temporarily half a-going, 
so that they are more likely to receive the commotion 
from the eye than others." 

"That may be the reason why it's so hard to see 
mistakes in a letter that you've written yourself. 
Your mind is full of the thing you intended to write, 
and you see it, even if on the paper it's different. 
I have a trick of writing 'the' or 'they' for 'their, ' 
and even when I re-read a letter I've written, I'll 
often leave the mistake in." 

"You can make such mistakes, too, because of 
your general mental make-up, your previous mental 
life," added Miss Atwell. For instance, I picked up 
the paper the other day, and seeing the heading 'The 
School-Girl Question,' started to read that column. 
What was my surprise to find it was really 'The Ser- 



64 The Human Nature Club 

vant-Girl Question.* My general bent of mind as 
a teacher had made me interpret my hasty glance 
wrongly. You, Mrs. Ralston, I suppose, would make 
the opposite mistake, in case you made any. The cell 
commotions coming from our organs of sense — that is, 
from eyes, ears, nose, skin, etc. — seem to serve as 
hints, which we interpret sometimes rightly, some- 
times wrongly. The reception a sensation meets with 
seems to be about as important as the sensation itself. " 
"Do you remember the talk we were having at 
breakfast about Professor Larkin's lecture the day 
the club was started?'* said Mrs. Elkin. *'I said that 
it wasn't the eyes that saw, but the knowledge behind 
them, and Herbert backed me up by telling how Mr. 
Rogers could see at a distance of ten feet bugs and 
things that he couldn't see till they were pointed out 
to him. Our talk to-night has shown that we were 
right, hasn't it?" 

NOTES BY THE EDITOR, 

The club's conclusions in this chapter are all thoroughly 
scientific. What we think and feel and do in any situation 
does depend on the make-up of the brain the stimulus comes 
to, as well as the nature of the stimulus itself, (i) The general 
bias of the mind, (2) its particular equipment in a certain 
field, and (3) the ideas wnich temporarily possess it, all make 
a difference. 

This fact is often referred to by the words Apperceptio7i or 
Assimilation, 



CHAPTER VI 

ATTENTION 

Mr. Elkin, who was the chairman, opened the sixth 
meeting of the club by saying, *'I didn't have to look 
far for another general influence on human conduct 
or behavior, or reactions, and I want to be the first to 
report to-night. 

''I've been surprised again and again since Helen 
was born by occurrences like this. My wife and 
I would be sitting here talking, when all of a sudden 
she'd jump up and start for the door. 'What's the 
matter?' I would sayo 'Baby's crying; don't you 
hear?' would be the reply, and off she'd go. If I lis- 
tened attentively then I could hear the far-off squall- 
ing that is a necessary evil accompanying one of the 
best things in the world. But until then I hadn't 
heard a sound. Now, my ears are keener than my 
wife's, so that if it had been a matter of sensation, 
I should have heard first. It wasn't, nor was it 
wholly a matter of preparation. The difference was 
in her attention. As she used to say, she kept half- 
listening for the baby all the time. In thinking about 
similar facts this week, I've come to the opinion that 
differences in one's attention to his sensations and 
thoughts may make almost any difference in the reac- 
tion. I walked right into a tree the other day while 
I was thinking about some business matter. Now, 
my eyes were open and the tree was right in front of 

6s 



66 The Human Nature Club 

me, so I must have had the sensations which would 
lead one to turn aside. I certainly know enough not 
to try to walk through a tree. Yet I hit it fair and 
square. The trouble was that I was attending to my 
own thoughts. So it seems to me that what we do, 
the way we act in the different circumstances in which 
we are, is decided not only by what sensations we get 
and what sort of previous experiences we've had, but 
also by the amount of attention we give to the sensa- 
tions. " 

'*I'm glad you've brought this matter up, for 
I had been thinking of the same thing in connection 
with the boys and girls at school. The thing that 
makes perhaps the most difference between pupils 
in school life is the extent to which they, so to speak, 
focus their thoughts on the subject at hand. In fact, 
this is one aspect of human nature that I'd studied 
a good deal before we started this club." 

**Let's have Mr. Tasker give us a sort of a lecture 
on attention now," said Miss Fairbanks. **Then we 
can ask him questions and make him explain any 
observations we've made that seem due to it." 

'*Yes; that will be a good thing." 

*'It seems to me that I'm always talking here, but 
perhaps I do know a bit more about this particular 
thing than you do. First of all, I'm sorry you started 
out with the word ^attention,' for when we say 'Give 
attention to,* or *I attended,' we don't really mean 
that there is any stuff 'attention' that we add to our 
sensations or ideas, or any sort of a performance 
'attending' that we go through. We mean just the 
facts that (i) we assume certain bodily attitudes, that 



The Human Nature Club 67 

(2) certain sensations or ideas are clear, while others 
are weak and indistinct, and that (3) certain impulses 
and ideas are checked, nipped in the bud, whenever 
they venture to appear. For instance, when a boy in 
my school is, as we say, attending to what I'm saying 
to the class, what really happens in him is, first, that 
he holds his head so as to hear me well, keeps the 
muscles in his ears tense, and very likely keeps his 
body rather still, and breathes differently from usual. 
This sort of thing is what I've called assuming a cer- 
tain bodily attitude. In the second place, the sensa- 
tions of sound which he gets from my voice are clear 
and emphatic to him, while the sounds from the street, 
the other boys' faces, the hot or cold temperature of 
the room, etc., are all more indistinct and weak. My 
words are, so to speak, in focus, while all the rest is 
out of focus. In the third place, supposing some one 
whispers to him, he may check the impulse to whisper 
back. 

Now it is surely true that this boy will react differ- 
ently to my words than a boy who sits listlessly, 
with now one thing uppermost in his thoughts, now 
another, not checking the aimless impulses that come 
up. He will hear them better, understand them bet- 
ter, remember them better. It is also clear, to take 
a case like Mr. Elkin's, that a boy who sat there with 
his ears strained to catch the whispers of the girl 
behind him, with her silly talk clear 'in the focus,* 
and my wise words vague and out of focus, checking 
all impulses to anything save listening to that girl, 
would react very differently from the first boy. He 
would be attending, but to the wrong thing, as was 



68 



The Human Nature Club 



Mr. Elkin in the case of the tree. Is this clear, so 
far?" 

'*How do you know that one's ear-muscles behave 
differently when one listens? The ears don't move, 
do they?" 

^'They do in some animals, and may tend to in us. 
But what made me think the muscles were tense was 

the feeling of re- 
laxation in your 
ears which you 
have when you've 
been attending 
closely to sounds, 
but suddenly 
stop." 

''I don't believe 
I ever felt that." 

^'Well, it doesn't 
matter. You'll 
agree there is some 
change of bodily 
attitude?" 

**Yes; I just wondered about the ear-strain." 
*'To go on, then, the main thing to note is that 
any time we may have a number of things in mind, 
and that they are not all on a dead level, but that 
some one has the preeminence over the others, is 
clearer and more emphatic, and plays the leading role 
in determining our conduct, our reactions. Let me 
make a picture of Mr. Elkin's mind at the time he 
bumped his head against the tree. I'll put the clear, 
emphatic, possessing thoughts in the center, and the 




Fig. II. 



The Human Nature Club 69 

vague, unattended-to thoughts outside. When he hit 
the tree there was a change. The shock and pain 
were so emphatic that they temporarily banished the 
thoughts about the shoe business to the margin, and 
usurped the central place — /. ^., were attended to. 
The main thing, I repeat, is this preeminence of one 
among many feelings. There may also be more or 
less of the bodily attitude and checking of other 
thoughts and impulses." 

'*Do you think that we always are absorbed— 'pos- 
sessed,' to use your word — by some one thing above 
others? When one lies on one's back in the grass on 
a summer's day, half-awake, half-asleep, thinking of 
a dozen things, but not thinking much of any of them, 
is there really any one 'focal' idea? Aren't they all 
on the same level?" 

'*I don't know about that. They seem to be. But 
maybe they do have preeminence, one at a time, but 
keep it only for half a second or so, and thus give us 
the idea that during any ten or fifteen seconds we've 
thought indifferently of a dozen things. I don't see 
how one can settle the question. Take your choice." 

**Here's another question. Is there any fixed 
number of things one can have in mind at once?" 

'*I don't believe so. It seems to me that people 
differ greatly, that some boys in school, for instance, 
have what I call a *broad thought-capacity.' They 
seem to have a lot of things in mind at once. Little 
Dodge, who was the football captain last year, seemed 
to be able to watch all twenty-one players at once. 
The same trait appeared in his school-work, too. On 
the other hand, some people seem to have a narrow 



70 The Human Nature Club 

field of consciousness. Their thoughts go single file. 
They can only do one thing at a time." 

*'To come back to attention, I suppose we ought 
to try to find out what sort of goings on in our nerve- 
cells correspond to this prominence of one idea over 
others, but I confess I have only a guess, and can't 
find much about it in books. The bodily attitude is, 
of course, due to the action on the muscles of nerve- 
cells going out from the brain, the checking of other 
ideas and impulses. I found in James's 'Psychology' 
the following statement about that: *The sense organ 
must . . . adapt itself to clearest reception of the 
object by the adjustment of its muscular apparatus. '^ 

'*But as I said, for the mere superior clearness and 
emphasis of one idea compared with others, I have 
only a guess at an explantion. It is that in these 
cases the nerve-action lasts for a longer time. I have 
one observation which gives some little evidence for 
such a view. In the reveries we spoke of a few 
minutes ago, where no ideas are very clear or em- 
phatic, we can have a lot of ideas in a short time, 
many more, I think, than we have when our ideas are 
of the clear, emphatic kind. So there seems to be 
a time difference.'* 

**Don't you think, Mr. Tasker, that it is important 
to cultivate children's minds in this respect? I knew 
a little girl who seemed bright enough, but who just 
couldn't keep one thing uppermost in her mind. Any 
interesting sound or sight, any idea that crossed the 
margin of her mind, would drive out the arithmetic 
or piano lesson or whatever it was that she should 

*Page 228. 



The Human Nature Club 71 

have kept in the focus. The result was that she 
never learned to do anything very well, that she was 
always scatter-brained and seemed queer to other 
people." 

*'It is certainly mighty important. I think it's 
a big part of education at home and at school.*' 

''But how can you cultivate it? It seems to me 
that some people just are so and some just aren't." 

''There's a good deal of truth in that. I can see 
in school that the nervous constitution a child is born 
with and the general state of his health both 
influence his power of attention. Still I'm sure it can 
be cultivated in two ways. The trouble with your lit- 
tle girl was that she didn't check, didn't nip in the 
bud — 'inhibit' is the scientific word, I believe — the 
irrelevant ideas and impulses which came to her. 
Very likely the feeling of effort or strain which 
comes when we attend was intolerable to her. Now, 
one can improve oneself in this regard. One can 
learn to stand the disagreeable feeling of effort, to 
resist the attractions of irrelevant ideas, by beginning 
by doing it for a very short period; that is, you'd 
start in by attending to something — e. g., a spelling 
lesson — for say ten seconds, and gradually increase 
the time. While you did attend to a thing, you'd 
attend to it exclusively, but if your power was weak, 
you'd not try to attend for long. Moreover, what- 
ever you were trying to learn, you would learn by 
recall. Take spelling, for example. You'd have 
your little girl look at two or three words for ten 
seconds only, then try to write them down herself. 
This recalling things from within, instead of repeat- 



72 The Human Nature Club 

edly reading them, gives one practice in standing the 
feeling of effort and in checking irrelevant impulses. 

"The other way of improving ourselves along this 
line is by getting interested in the right sort of things. 
Most inattentive people aren't so much inattentive as 
attentive to the wrong things. The bad boy in 
school is generaly attentive. The trouble is that the 
object of his attention is the spit-ball or the girl in 
the corner instead of the algebra lesson. Our atten- 
tion largely follows our interests, and we improve 
it by improving them, by making it pay to attend to 
the good things. We've all gone through such a pro- 
cess. When we were babies, we attended to the light 
of the lamp, the milk-bottle, to our food and drink and 
aches and pains. A little later the prominent objects 
for our minds were bright, moving objects, beetles 
and flies, tearable things, brass bands and hand- 
organs; later still, wading in brooks, robbing birds' 
nests and fighting; later still, athletics and parties; 
still later, our business or political party or church. 
Our interests change of themselves as we grow, and 
our playmates and parents and teachers and preach- 
ers change them for us. As I hinted before, I believe 
that a big part of civilization is just a change in the 
nature of the objects to which we attend." 

*'You could say, too, couldn't you, that a pretty fair 
measure of any individual's culture or intellectual 
make-up was the sort of things he attended to. 
A girl may have had every chance, may have been 
through college and gone abroa^ and absorbed 
a great deal of information, but if she chooses to think 



The Human Nature Club 73 

chiefly of her looks and clothes, her culture won't be 
of much service to her or to any one else/* 

**Yes. In my opinion, what a person selects or 
chooses is always a better key to his make-up than 
what he has. However, we ought to remember that 
one's permanent interests, one's tendencies to attend, 
are largely dependent on what one has^ on one's per- 
manent store of knowledge. Ordinarily, if one fills 
his mind with a subject, he will become interested in 
it and attend to it. Another thing that I've often 
noticed is that sometimes just the notion of attending 
to a certain class of things may have a surprisingly 
big influence. Boys in school who have never 
thought of their physical development to any extent, 
are 'struck,' as we say, by the athletic craze, get sud- 
denly the idea of attending to their own physique, 
and from then on they are constantly testing their 
strength, training, weighing themselves, etc. Or take 
ourselves, for example. I suppose most of us have 
in the last month paid more attention to our own 
actions and thoughts and to the ways they behave 
than we did in the year before. I was- started on this 
new track by Arthur's famous observation, and I sup- 
pose my idea started you. Why I speak of these sud- 
den changes in the nature of the things we attend to 
is because it is an aspect of human nature which 
seems to m^e practically important. It gives the pos- 
sibility of reforming it, of a sort of sudden intellectual 
conversion. Change or improvement in the things 
which hold the preeminence in our minds need not 
always be as gradual as it generally is. For w^ 



74 The Human Nature Club 

mustn't forget that a change more frequently comes 
slowly. What did you start to say, Henshaw?" 

'^Before we leave this topic of attention I'd like to 
call your attention to a fact Tasker has hinted at. 
We saw last time that what was in us, due to our pre- 
vious thoughts and experiences, influenced our reac- 
tions. One way it does it is by directing our attention — 
that is, by making certain impressions clear and 
inhibiting others. In Tasker's words, 'One's tenden- 
cies to attend are dependent on what one has, on 
one's permanent store of knowledge.' He could have 
added, 'and also on whatever happens to temporarily 
fill the mind.' " 

"It's time now," said the chairman, *'to talk about 
our next meeting. The observation and question box 
has been filling up, but I know of at least one more 
factor that influences the reactions of human beings, 
and I think we'd better keep on the same tack a little 
longer. I suppose you all, in the meantime, are talk- 
ing human nature and comparing notes on what you 
see just as we are here in the house. One thing the 
club has done for us is to relieve daily conversation 
from the burden of the weather, Helen's health, and 
the latest things in passementerie, mousseline de sole, 
overskirts, and polonaised gores of chiffon. There's 
been a mighty good change in the sort of things we 
attend to, I can tell you." 

NOTES BY THE EDITOR. 

The club's main conclusions are, as usual, scientific. Not so 
much the thoughts we have as the thought we have clearly in 
the mind's focus, count in determining our conduct. Mr. 
Tasker's description of this condition needs no amendment. 



The Human Nature Club 75 

His guess as to its cause is only a guess, but a rather ingenious 
one. It is well to notice that we have two very different sorts 
of predominance in our ideas; first, predominance due to the 
intrinsic attractiveness of the idea, when we feel that the idea 
claims attention of itself; second, predominance when we feel 
that we ^/-z/^ attention to it contrary to our natural impulses. 
The second sort has going with it a feeling of strain or effort. 
The first is often called involuntary attention, the second 
voluntary. Our aim should be, as Mr. Tasker says, to learn to 
stand the effort of voluntary attention, because there are always 
disagreeable things that must be done, and also to teach our- 
selves to enjoy attending (that is, to attend involuntarily with- 
out effort) to the right things. Pages 100-115 of James's " Talks 
to Teachers on Psychology " may well be read in connection 
with this chapter. 



CHAPTER Vll 

MEMORY 

**You said last time, Mr. Elkin, that you had 
noticed one more general factor that influenced 
human nature. What is it?" 

**I'll tell you the exact observation, though it puts 
me in rather a bad light. About three weeks ago, 
Mrs. Elkin gave me a letter to mail, telling me at the 
time that it was very important. 'When the sense- 
impression of the post-office reaches your mind, you 
react by putting that letter in the box,' said she. 
]Four days later I came home to find my wife's human 
nature decidedly upset. *You look cross,* said I. 
'No wonder,' said she. 'I wrote Miss Northrup to 
come here to-day and to-morrow to make up that 
dress I bought. She didn't come, or answer my letter 
even.' 'I'm sorry,' said I, 'but human nature can't 
always be relied on, and women have rarely any sense 
of business matters.' I pulled off my overcoat and 
took the newspaper out of my pocket. As I spread 
it open, a letter fell on the floor. My wife stooped 
to pick it up. 'You never mailed that letter!' she 
cried. 'You are the one that's to blame.' 'By 
George! I guess I am,' I said. 'That's too bad.' 
'Wo77ien have rarely any sense of business!' said she. 
'You might at least pay enough attention to things 
to have your wife look presentable at a party.' 
*Wife,' said I, 'let us not dally with the moral aspect 

76 



The Human Nature Club 77 

of this case, but let us treat it as an interesting fact 
of human nature. Why did I fail to react to the sight 
of that post-office? I did see it, I did attend to it; 
I did have previous knowledge to inform me that it 
was the post-office.* 'You're an unfeeling wretch,* 
said she. 'The least you can do is to buy me another 
dress.*' *Inhibitthat idea,* said I; 'check it at once. 
I failed to react, evidently, because of a failure of 
memory. The idea of a letter to be mailed did not 
come up in my mind. We must talk about memory 
at some future meeting of the club and find out how 
to improve mine.* 'You remember that new dress 
idea,* growled she, but she couldn't help laughing. 

''So memory is my new general factor. We may 
feel and assimilate and attend to a situation — e. g.^ 
a post-office — but if it doesn't call up the right idea 
to us, the reaction will not take place. And the kind 
of reaction that takes place will depend on the idea 
that is called up. Take four men walking by the 
post-office. Let them all see it; let all have pre- 
vious experiences enabling them to recognize it ; let 
them all attend to it. One remembers, 'I have a let- 
ter to post'; another thinks, 'I need some stamps'; 
another, 'The postmaster owes me five dollars'; 
while the fourth has no special ideas. Their reactions 
will all differ. Remembering is clearly an important 
part of human nature, especially for a married man 
whose wife writes important letters. I hope to get 
some new light on our memories to-night.** 

"You need some new light on the folly of making 
weak jokes,** said Mrs. Elkin. 

**I*m glad,** said Mr. Tasker, **that you've started 



78 The Human Nature Club 

up this topic, for I also had thought of these ideas 
which come up in our minds as factors in determining 
our reactions. Let's see what we can find out about 
them/' 

**If you're going to give the name ^memories' to 
ideas that are called up in our minds, it seems to me 
that you ought to have some other word for a sort 
of thing most people would call memory. For 
instance, we say that we remember how to play the 
piano, to swim, to dance, to play football. But here 
ideas aren't called up at all." 

''Just what does happen in those cases, Miss 
Atwell?" 

''If I've observed rightly, what happens is this: We 
learn to respond to certain situations by certain acts. 
In playing the piano, one learns to make certain arm 
and finger movements at the sight of certain notes. 
Now, this association or connection of an act with 
a sense-impression is more or less permanent, so that 
when a day or a year later we see those same notes 
we are able to make the same movements. Acts 
once learned can be repeated later on, just as ideas 
once in mind can later be remembered, be called 
up." 

"Why not keep the word 'memories' for both, but 
call this thing 'memories of how to do things, ' and 
the other just 'memories?'-" 

"I should say that it would be as well not to have 
any particular name, but just to call the facts what 
they are — namely, 'permanent tendencies to act in old 
ways' ; or better still, 'permanent associations between 
situations and acts." 



The Human Nature Club 79 

*'Let's do that, then. Has any one any remarks 
to make about these permanent associations? Miss 
Atwell." 

''There are two things which I thought about in 
connection with them, two respects in which they 
seen:i to differ from regular memories. In the first 
place, whereas in remembering the name of a place, 
or the meaning of a word, or anything of that sort, 
you either do remember it or do forget it, in these 
permanent associations you may neither remember 
nor yet forget. You may do something part way 
between. P'or instance, next spring I shall remember 
how to play tennis. I shall not play as well as last 
fall, nor so poorly as when I first began to learn. 
The associations formed between seeing the ball 
come at a certain speed and angle, and moving my 
body in certain ways, will not be so perfect as in the 
fall, but will by no means be entirely annihilated. 
I can relearn, can get back to my old 'form' in a short 
time. 

In the second place, we seem to learn these things 
when we are itot doing them. If you start to learn 
any physical game, you will find that very often 
indeed you do better after a day away from the game 
than you did the last time right at the end of practice. 
People even say, you know, that we learn to skate in 
summer and swim in winter, though that isn't true. 
But a day or so without practice often seems to help 
rather than hurt. I suppose the nerve-cells somehow 
grow to fit their new activities. That may possibly 
be true of our regular memories. Some people do say 
that things learned just before going to bed are bet- 



8o The Human Nature Club 

ter remembered the next forenoon than if you learned 
them that day." 

''I wonder whether your first point, that associa- 
tions between idea and idea are either totally present 
or totally absent, while associations between idea 
and act are of all grades of strength, will really hold 
true. Although one seems not to be able to call up 
an idea at all when he has forgotten it, yet he might 
relearn the thing in a shorter time. I'd like to try 
an experiment with you on that. But wait till we get 
through to-night, and I'll tell you my scheme." 

Since it took a number of weeks to finish the experiments 
which Arthur devised, the Editor takes the liberty of recount- 
ing instead of them some facts which Professor Ebbinghaus 
found to be true. 

Professor Ebbinghaus made out a set of lists of nonsense 
syllables like this: rig tab lud sem gat do v pern rol zm tuf, etc. 
He would then read over one of these lists as many times as 
would enable him to repeat it from memory, counting the num- 
ber of times it took. He would then relearn the same list after 
ten minutes, and see how many readings were needed this 
time. With other lists of equal difficulty he would do the same 
thing, only waiting, say thirty minutes before relearning. With 
other lists, he would wait an hour; with others, eight hours, 
etc. He found that even when he seemed to have forgotten 
the thing, he could relearn it in a shorter tiine. At the end 
of an hour, about half the original number of readings would 
suffice; at the end of nine hours, two-thirds the number of 
original readings; at the end of a month, four-fifths. 

This shows that the permanent effects of learning ideas 
really do not vanish suddenly, but wear away gradually, just as 
do the permanent effects of learning to dance, swim or play 
tennis. 

*'Let's change our usual plan a bit to-night," said 
Mr. Tasker, '*and first see what questions we'd like 



The Human Nature Club 8i 

to have answered about this calling up of ideas. 
Then we can bring up observations to help us answer 
them, and perhaps I can tell you of some observa- 
tions by scientific men which I've come across. Of 
course a big part of teaching is getting ideas to come 
up in pupil's minds on the right occasions, so I've 
made it my business to look into this matter." 

"The first question would naturally be, *What 
happens in the nerve-cells when one thing calls up 
another?' wouldn't it?" 

"I'd like to know what makes people differ so 
much in their ability to remember." 

"And I'd like to know how to improve mine," 
added Mr. Elkin. 

"I know a man who can remember people's names 
wonderfully well, but his memory isn't extraordinary 
in other lines. I'd like that explained." 

"Why did I remember things when I had the fever 
that I supposed I'd utterly forgotten?" 

"Now is the time for the question I asked at our 
first meeting, 'Why do some old people remember 
things that happened sixty years back better than 
things that happened the day before?' " 

"Are there any more questions?" said Miss Clark. 
"If not, who can answer the first question?" 

"I have a book here," said Mr. Tasker, "which 
answers it, I think. I'll read you what it says. 
' When two elementary brain-processes have been active 
together or in ijnniediate succession^ one of the^n^ on recur- 
ring^ tends to propagate its excitement into the other. ' 
That is given as the reason why ideas call up each 
other. By brain-processes the author means commo- 



8l The Human Nature Club 

tions in nerve-cells. He would explain the fact that 
4X9 makes us think ^6^ by saying that the brain-pro- 
cess which gives us the idea 4X9 had in the past been 
connected with the brain-process giving us the idea 
36. This connection is more or less permanent, so 
that when for any reason the 4X9 cell commotions 
are aroused they set off also the 2>^ commotion. 
'They propagate their excitement/ as he says. We 
saw at our first meeting that our automatic perform- 
ances were due to the existence of connections 
between nerve-cells; we've seen that our unlearned 
abilities were due to such connections which were 
born in us; we've seen that the way a man meets any 
situation depends on the sum total of connections in 
his brain, and we now see that the presence of these 
memories or ideas that are called up is due to the per- 
sistence of such connections and the arousal of one 
set of nerve-cells by another. Unfortunately for Mr. 
Elkin, the cell commotion corresponding to the idea 
Metter to be put in box' wasn't aroused by the cell 
commotion corresponding to the sight of the post- 
office. The circuit was cut off, was not complete." 

''You would say, then, that things which have been 
thought of together call each other up, and that the 
reason for this is that when two sets of nerve-cells 
have been active in connection, one set, if somehow 
excited to activity, tends to arouse activity in the 
other also; that we think of D, E after A, B, C for 
just the same reason that we put one arm into a coat- 
sleeve after we put the other in." 

"Yes. And the reason that we forget, that is, that 
an object doesn't always call up what it has been with 



The Human Nature Club 83 

before, is that these nervous connections fade with 
time.'* 

"I can see that, but I don't see just what decides 
which particular associate an idea shall call up. Take 
the word 'post-office.' When you said it, I thought 
of John Wanamaker. Now, I have had hundreds of 
ideas in my mind atone time or another in connection 
with that word 'post-office.' Why did that particular 
one come up?" 

''I should say that the one that had been with it 
of tenest would stand the best chance," said Mr. Hen- 
shaw. "A man's name is likely to make us think of 
his face; i, 2, 3, 4, 5 makes us think of 6; 10X2 
makes us think of 20; Manila makes us think of 
Dewey." 

**But I had thought of other things in connection 
with the post-office more times than I had of Wana- 
maker. I think it was because day before yesterday 
Fred Collins and I were talking about some of the 
things he did as postmaster. Recency often deter- 
mines which associate shall come up, doesn't it?" 

"When Mr. Henshaw just said i, 2, 3, 4, 5, 
I thought, not of 6, but of a problem my class had 
to-day which gave that answer. The children thought 
it funny to get just those figures in that order. That 
was recency, surely." 

''It might have been something more than that. 
The way the children noticed the combination of 
numbers probably made a fairly emphatic, vivid 
impression. When Mr. Henshaw said Manila, I didn't 
think of Dewey, but of a very dear friend of mine 
who died there. It was long ago, so that recency had 



84 The Human Nature Club 

nothing to do with bringing that idea up. Probably 
the importance of the experience which connected 
the word * Manila' with the thought of that friend 
made it suggest her just now." 

** We'll have to put it this way, then: Other things 
being equal, the most habitually, the most recently, 
and the most vividly connected idea will be the one 
called up. And let's by next week have a number of 
actual cases of thoughts called up and test this rule." 

''I'd like to give one case now, Mr. Henshaw, 
because it doesn't seem to fit any of these three," 
said Mrs. Elkin. ''I know a woman who has occa- 
sional gloomy periods, fits of very blue blues. Now, 
if you should say to her then, i, 2, 3, 4, 5, she 
wouldn't think of any common associate of those 
numbers or of anything recent or vivid. She'd prob- 
ably sigh and say, *Five years is more than I want to 
live.' If you spoke of 10X2, she wouldn't think 
of 20. Oh, no! She'd say, 'I believe I have ten 
hundred times as much trouble as any one else.' 
Whatever idea came up, you can be sure it would be 
a gloomy one. And I think we are all made a good 
deal after that same plan. If our mind has for the 
time being a gay or sad or bitter attitude, the ideas 
which are called up will conform to it. They seem 
to be called up in harmony with our emotional tone." 

"That is true in my case." 

''It is with all of us, I guess," said Mr. Elkin. 
"We'll have to add that as a fourth rule." 

"We ought to remember, also," said Mr. Tasker, 
"that in all this we've been having in mind our natural, 
spontaneous flow of ideas, the way ideas are called 



The Human Nature Club 85 

up apart from our own definite search for them. 
When a man starts in to think about something with 
a purpose, he doesn't just let ideas come naturally, 
but he controls the process. The case may be differ- 
ent then. Let's bear this in mind." 

**Is any one ready to answer those questions which 
came up? Perhaps we'd better leave them till next 
time, and be surer of our opinions." 



CHAPTER VIII 

TRAINS OF THOUGHT 

'*We have some questions left over from last time. 
The first was, 'What makes people differ so much in 
their abilities to remember?' Who can answer it?" 

"I think I can," replied Miss Atwell; ''that is, if 
you'll give me time. People differ, at least the chil- 
dren at school do, in two ways. First, there are 
some in whose minds all sorts of connections between 
ideas stay much more firmly. I once had a girl who 
would remember a short poem from a single reading. 
Everything that she saw or heard seemed to make an 
almost indelible impression on her. She could 
remember one thing as well as another. Her general 
retentiveness was surely twice as good as that of any 
other child in the class. 

'^Second, there are some in whose minds certain 
things stay firmly, though other things don't. One 
of my boys will rarely forget anything you tell him 
about steam engines or railroads, though he forgets 
his arithmetic and spelling on the slightest provocation. 

"Now, the first sort of difference — that is, in ^^;^- 
eral retentiveness — is due to some general difference 
in the quality of the nerve-cells in the different peo- 
ple. I looked the question up in Mr. Tasker's psy- 
chology book. Professor James says there: 'Those 
persons .... who retain names, dates, and ad- 
dresses, anecdotes, gossip, poetry, quotations, and all 

86 



The Human Nature Club 87 

sorts of miscellaneous facts, without an effort, have 
desultory memory in a high degree, and certainly owe 
it to the unustcal tenacity of their brain substance ' 

*'But the second sort of difference is due to interest 
in certain facts which makes us attend to them, think 
about them, connect them in our minds with a great 
many other things. For any sort of facts, that person 
will have the better memory who cares about them, 
thinks them over and over. So with my boy with the 
engines; so with the politician who remembers names; 
so with the business man who remembers prices. This 
idea again I got from that book." 

''Would that explain your question. Miss Clark, 
about the man with a good memory for names, but 
not for other things?" 

''I don't know. He wasn't a politician, but he 
did, I fancy, pride himself on this ability of his, and 
so take an interest in names and think about them." 

''Don't forget," said Mrs. Elkin, "to tell Mr. 
Elkin how to improve his. I've thought of making 
him learn twenty lines of poetry every day." 

"That would be making him suffer without doing 
him any good," replied Miss Atwell. "That method 
has been tried and found wanting. It won't even 
make him remember prose any more easily, much less 
to mail letters. I know of a gentleman's training 
himself this way on 'Paradise Lost' for thirty-eight 
days. He tested his memory before and after by 
keeping record of the time it took him to learn some 
other poetry, and he didn't improve.^ In fact, 

^See James, " Psychology," Vol. I, p. 667, for a full account of the experi- 
ment. 



88 The Human Nature Club 

I don't believe that our general retentiveness can be 
improved. James says it can't.'* 

'*How do people improve so much, then?" said 
Miss Clark. ''Educated people certainly learn more 
quickly than uneducated." 

"That could be due to several things. First of all, 
they improve in attentiveness, power of concentration, 
and that improves their ability to learn quickly. Sec- 
ondly, they find out better ways of learning. They 
learn the main points first, and then fill in the details, 
instead of learning bit by bit. They also learn by 
recalling from within instead of just repeating a thing 
over and over. Finally, they develop interests in 
things, think about them, have a lot of connections 
ready for each new fact, and so systematize their 
memories. You folks should read the chapter on 
memory in James's 'Talks to Teachers on Psy- 
chology.' " 

"There are two more questions, one about remem- 
bering long-forgotten facts when one has a fever, the 
other about old people calling up incidents of their 
childhood and forgetting things that happened only 
a few days before." 

"I asked Dr. Leighton about that," said Mrs. 
Ralston. "He said that as to the first point he 
didn't know just why, but that somehow or other the 
disturbances in the brain due to the fever started into 
activity cell-connections which had been for a long 
while disconnected from the daily happenings in our 
brain. As to the second point, he said that as people 
grew old their nerve-cells often became less easily 
aroused into action, and that this fact might explaia 



The Human Nature Club 89 

old people's forgetting recent events. The cropping 
out of memories of childhood, he said, might be due 
to the waning of a lot of customary habits of adult 
thought. When these become weakened, the old, 
long-unused connections may again be active. He 
said, however, that this was only a guess, and that 
other guesses equally probable could be made." 

**I have three rather interesting observations that 
may be worth reporting, two of cases of extraordinary 
retentiveness, and one of almost supernatural memory 
in a fever patient. I'm not sure of the truth of the 
last, though I found it in a reputable book. The 
first two cases are interesting because they show that 
a good memory may go with very low general 
mental ability. 

''A young man who was feeble-minded and had 
only with difficulty learned to talk and to read, could, 
'if two or three minutes were allowed him to peruse 
an octavo page, then spell the single words out from 
memory as well as if the book lay open before him.' 
He did this as well with a Latin book he had never 
seen, whose subject and language were both unknown 
to him.^ 

**A certain Pennsylvania farmer 'could remember 
the day of the week on which any date had fallen for 
forty-two years past, and also the kind of weather it 
was and what he was doing on each of more than 
fifteen thousand days. '^ 

" 'A boy at the age of four suffered fracture of the 

^Drobisch, "Empirische Psychologie," p. 95, quoted by James, Vol. I, 
p. 660. 

^Quoted by James from Henkle, "Journal of Speculative Philosophy," 
January, 1871. 



go The Human Nature Club 

skull, for which he underwent the operation of the 
trepan. He was at the time in a state of perfect 
stupor, and after his recovery retained no recollection 
either of the accident or of the operation. At the 
age of fifteen, however, during the delirium of fever, 
he gave his mother an account of the operation, and 
the persons who were present at it, with a correct 
description of their dress, and other minute particu- 
lars. He had never been observed to allude to it 
before, and no means were known by which he could 
have acquired the circumstances which he men- 
tioned.' "^ 

**Is that all concerning these special questions. 
If so, we'll go on. We are to each describe some 
spontaneous train of thought which we have had this 
week, and try to see in each case why the ideas were 
called up. Will you be the first. Miss Fairbanks?" 

**I was on a trolley-car which was going very slowly, 
much to my disgust. I thought of the speed at which 
I had heard that the cars in New York ran. Then 
I thought about the trip to New York which I am 
contemplating, and wondered whether I could there 
get the exact shades of cheese-cloth that I want for 
the costumes in the tableaux." 

**Suppose you explain that yourself." 

'*I should say that my thinking of the rate of the 
New York cars after thinking of the slow rate of the 
one I was on was just a case of two things having 
been together once, and so tending to call each other 
up. Then out of the whole thought, 'fast rate of cars 



439 



'Quoted from Abercrombie. "Intellectual Powers" by Carpenter, on p. 
otthe ' Mental Physiology." 



The Human Nature Club 91 

in New York/ I attended mainly to the *New York,' 
and it called up my trip because, though hundreds of 
other things have been connected in my mind with 
New York, this particular thing had recency and 
vividness and interest in its favor. Now, why I then 
thought of that cheese-cloth I can't say, but possibly 
I've been thinking of it so much that it's at present 
predominant in my mind and tends to come up on all 
sorts of occasions.'* 

*'Is there anything more to add? If not, will you 
please be the next, Miss Atwell?" 

''I was clipping the dead leaves off our fern, when 
I suddenly thought of the quantities of wild ferns 
growing in front of our cottage last summer." 

'*Will you stop a minute. Miss Atwell?" asked Mr. 
Tasker. ''How do you explain that?" 

''I was going to ask the rest of you. The sight 
of that fern, or the thought of cutting off its dead 
leaves had never been connected in my mind with 
anything. In fact, I can't see that the thought, 
'This car goes very slowly,' had ever before been 
connected in Miss Fairbanks' m.ind with the thought 
that in New York cars go fast." 

"Can any one explain this instance?" said the 
chairman. "It certainly is a fact that seeing one dog 
often makes us think of some other dog, seeing one 
senator of some other senator, etc., just as one car- 
speed reminded Miss Fairbanks of another, and one 
fern reminded Miss Atwell of others. Yet in lots of 
these cases, if not in all, the two things haven't gone 
together." 

After a pause, Mr. Tasker spoke. "If you folks 



gi The Human Nature Club 

are baffled, it's not your fault. I should be if we 
hadn't been all through this thing in college. The 
point is that not all of your idea is operative, counts, 
plays a part in calling up the next. In Miss Atwell's 
case the sight of the scissors, the deadness of the 
leaves, the peculiar properties of that fern cut no 
figure. It was just the general fern appearance, or 
still more likely, just the word fern, that cut any 
figure in calling up the next idea. Now, the word 
fern or the fern appearance /lad been connected with 
all those ferns by the summer cottage, had been 
together with them very often, had been their habit- 
ual associate all the summer. 

"There can be all gradations in the amount of 
any idea which shall be operative in calling up 
another. When you think * William McKinley, ' and 
then think of his face, the whole of the first idea 
counts; when you think, as I did this week, of how 
Fred Nelson looked last Fourth of July playing first 
base, and then think that you owe him a letter, only 
a part of the first idea — /. e., the name or face — 
counts; when you think of a football, and then of 
a balloon, only a fraction of the first idea counts, 
probably its rounded, inflated character. A part of 
the first idea is all of it that need have gone with the 
second idea. In college we were taught to call those 
cases where a good deal of the first idea had been 
with the second, cases of association by contiguity^ and 
the cases where only some few parts or elements of 
the first idea had been with the second, cases of associ- 
ation by sifnilarity. I don't, however, think much of 
these names." 



The Human Nature Club 93 

**I take it we can all see now how one thing may 
follow another in our minds because it has gone with 
some part of the first idea. So we'll let you continue, 
Miss Atwell.'' 

*'Well, thinking of the ferns and cottage made me 
see in my mind's eye a sunshiny day, and then a pic- 
ture of the blue bay we see from the cottage, and then 
of a storm on it, and then of myself in a boat, and 
then of a friend bailing out the water. Of course all 
these are cases of things which have gone with one 
another. The storm picture after the blue bay is, 
I suppose, a case where just the 'bay' counts. The 
vividness of the original experience probably made 
the boat picture come up." 

*'Miss Clark, what was your train of thought?" 

"I tried to catch myself and see what I'd been 
thinking about, but I couldn't. Whenever I'd think 
of doing so I'd find I'd been thinking about nothing. 
I don't understand you people who have all these 
ideas running through your minds all the time. 
I don't believe I do. Finally I decided that if 
I couldn't get a natural train of thought, I'd just 
make one come. I said to myself, I will think of 
a pile of one hundred dollar bills six inches high on 
that table, all belonging to me, and see what 
thoughts come afterward. I thought of getting 
a number of things and of going to Europe. I 
couldn't at the end remember just what I did think." 

''I'm afraid that your observation isn't exactly 
suitable for discussion, then," said Arthur: ''so I'll 
call on you for your report, Tasker. " 

''Tuesday night I dined with the Ritters. I'll say 



94 The Human Nature Club 

now, as it's important for what comes later, that we 
talked considerably about various literary topics. On 
leaving the car on the way home I found that it was 
raining, and on crossing Milbank Street I felt the 
dampness through my thin shoes. About thirty or 
forty seconds later I found myself thinking of the 
lines Othello speaks just before he kills himself: 

" Say that in Aleppo once 
When a malignant and a turbaned Turk 
Beat a Venetian and traduced the state, 
I took by the throat the circumcised dog 
And smote him, thus." 

Luckily I thought of the club, and traced back the 
train of thoughts which connected these two very 
different ideas. It was this way. Noticing that my 
feet were getting wet called up the scene in George 
Eliot's 'Silas Marner' where Geoffrey goes out into 
the storm in his dancing-pumps. I then thought of 
Brunetiere's opinion that George Eliot's novels were 
realistic in a truer sense than were Zola's. Then 
came the memory that a year ago, when I was in 
Cambridge studying, Brunetiere had lectured on 
Moliere; then the memory that my brother had not 
been able to understand the spoken French well 
enough to give me a definite opinion of Brunetiere; 
then the thought of a certain man who had gotten the 
tickets for my brother and several ideas about this 
man. Then came the idea that if Brunetiere had 
been a fool, he might have paid English people 
a banale compliment by comparing Moliere with 
Shakspere, and then the idea that perhaps some of 
the fine things in Shakspere which we esteem as 



The Human Nature Club 95 

wonderful insights into human nature may really have 
been in the author's mind only barefaced devices for 
making a hit. Finally came the thought of Othello's 
last speech as a possible case of this, and then 
I started repeating the lines. 

''Now remember that all this was totally sponta- 
neous. If I hadn't thought of the club, and so traced 
the thing ack and repeated it and so fixed it, 
I shouldn't by the time I reached the house have 
known that I'd ever had any of these ideas. It was 
almost like a dream." 

''Your thoughts seem much more complicated than 
the others have been. They are more general, are 
thoughts 'of the fact that so and so is so and so,' 
instead of being thoughts of simple things. They 
seem more like our controlled thinking." 

"Yes; and they seemed to me to show another 
thing. They show a tendency to cling to a certain 
system or family of ideas, in this case a literary sys- 
tem. The thought of George Eliot didn't call up any 
of the Georges I've known or any of the Eliots, but 
called up a literary associate. Even after my thoughts 
drifted to the characeristics of the man who got the 
tickets, they swung back again to literary matters. 
I should say, as a rash guess, that my after-dinner 
talk had aroused the literary part of me, and that 
therefore ideas from that quarter were more likely to 
come up than ideas from elsewhere. If I'd been 
talking about Mrs. A. 's lumbago and Mrs. B. 'scon- 
sumption and my host's rheumatism, the wetness of 
my feet would probably have caused a sort of patho- 
logical and medicinal train of thought. I'm sure that 



g6 The Human Nature Club 

with me things run in systems, and the result of any 
idea depends a good deal on the system it enters.*' 

**I know that to be true. What idea will come up 
in one's mind depends on the general aspect or flavor 
of one's thinking at the time, as well as on the particu- 
lar idea that has gone before it. We practically said 
that much when we were talking over the case of the 
Good Samaritan and others." 

''I wonder," said Mr. Henshaw, "whether the rest 
of you are like me in always having your thoughts 
run in systems in this way. I often think it is absurd 
for me to speak of my *mind, ' for I'm sure I have 
a dozen or more. What I think about at any time is 
sure to be decided in great measure by the system 
I'm in, just as Tasker's being in his literary system 
made wet feet suggest a scene from a novel to him. 
The way I look at things, my talk, conduct, temper, 
and all vary with the different 'systems.' I have an 
office system, and when I'm in that I look at every- 
thing as copy for the paper. I sometimes believe if 
I were dying when my mind happened to be in this 
particular system, I should not bother much about it, 
but should be rather glad to have the chance to de- 
scribe the feelings of approaching death. I have 
a home system; a summer vacation system, where 
I drop all traces of civilization and steal and poach 
like an Indian without a trace of remorse; and so 
on and on. The remarkable thing is that I can 
change from one to the other more quickly than I can 
change my overcoat. But I'm straying from the point, 
which is that the kind of system you are in plays 
a large part in determining what you will think of." 



The Human Nature Club 97 

"Before we go on to the topic of non-spontaneous, 
controlled trains of thought," said Arthur, ''it may- 
be well to sum up what we've seen so far this evening. 
A number of concrete cases of reveries or trains of 
thought, or associations of ideas, have enforced the 
fact that thoughts which have gone together tend to 
call each other up. We have found that frequency, 
recency, and vividness are, as we thought last week, 
favorable factors. We have found, also, that not the 
idea as a whole, but only a part of it, need have gone 
with the idea which it calls up. We have seen in 
Tasker's case, how mere reverie may be about very 
general matters, and that, further, mere reverie may 
be a good deal like voluntary, controlled thinking. 
We have seen that the mind has various attitudes or sys- 
tems^ and that what idea will come up in any case is 
frequently dependent on what system or attitude is 
then prevailing. " 

**How many observed in themselves cases of con- 
trolled, purposive trains of thought? What was yours, 
mother?" 

'*I was writing a letter." 

''And yours, Mrs. Elkln?" 

"I was thinking about where' to go this summer." 

*'And yours, Miss Fairbanks?" 

*'I was trying to devise some way of lessening my 
budget. I want to save some money." 

"And yours, Tasker?" 

**I was working out a problem in geometry which 
I found in an English text-book." 

"And yours, Mr. Henshaw?" 

"I was writing an editorial." 



98 The Human Nature Club 

''Now I will surprise all you folks," said Arthur, 
''by telling you just the process of thinking you went 
through. It was alike in all cases, and it was this. 
You started out by fixing your attention on the 
thought which had started you on the work. If any 
other ideas were called up by it, you took a sort of. 
quick look at them, and if they weren't harmonious 
with, useful for, the general aim you had in mind, 
you promptly inhibited them, didn't attend to them 
any longer. If they did fit, you attended to them 
and let them call up whatever ideas might come. 
And then re-occurred the same process of selection. 
The ordinary spontaneous flow of ideas is at the bot- 
tom of voluntary, controlled thinking. If it doesn't 
provide any ideas, you can't do anything at all. From 
what it gives, you can select, and thus influence the 
next spontaneous lot. You can't have ideas by want- 
ing them ever so badly; you can only choose from 
what turn up. How is that? Am I right?" 

"That's just about what happened in my case," 
said Miss Fairbanks. *'I started with the thought, 
'How can I spend less?' and up came the idea of buy- 
ing fewer gowns. That brought up the idea of 
a lovely one I saw last week, but of course I inhibited 
that, and held on to the 'fewer gowns' idea and to my 
orginal question, which suggested one by one the 
ideas 'walk to town instead of riding,' 'stop all candy 
and flowers,' 'buy no books or magazines,' stay at 
home 'in the summer,' etc. With these came other 
irrelevant ideas, which I inhibited." 

"Your description fits my case all right," added 
Mr. Henshaw. "I started with the idea, 'The duty 



The Human Nature Club 99 

of the city to Its library.' A lot of ideas came up, 
some mediocre, some totally off the question. None 
were good. Finally I reached a point where nothing 
came at all, and I gave it up.'* 

''It fits mine, too," said Mr. Tasker. ''I looked at 
the problem and a certain scheme for doing it came 
to my mind. I tried it a way, but it soon suggested 
another idea which showed it to be unavailing; so 
on with several notions, each being the starting-point 
for new associations, till finally one idea suggested 
another which did work." 

''Does my account satisfy you, too?" said Arthur 
to his mother and sister. 

"Yes; how did you make such a brilliant guess?" 

"I didn't. I cribbed it from Tasker's book. 
Listen: 'From the guessing of newspaper enigmas to 
the plotting of the policy of an empire there is no 
other process than this. We must trust to the laws 
of cerebral nature to present us spontaneously with 
the appropriate idea, but we must know it for the right 
one when it comes.' "^ 

"This meeting, friends, has already been too long. 
I declare it adjourned." 

'See James's " Briefer Course in Psychology," p. 275. 



CHAPTER IX 

MENTAL IMAGERY 

''You folks," said Arthur, ''were talking a good 
deal last week about seeing in your mind's eye blue 
bays and stormy seas and people's faces and what 
not. What do you mean? I can't see anything unless 
it's present. " 

"Yes, you can. For instance, just think of the 
way the breakfast-table looks. Close your eyes. 
Can't you see it?" 

"No; I can get little glimpses of one thing and 
another for about a quarter of a second apiece, but 
I can't in any sense see it as I do the real table, and 
I don't believe you can." 

"Certainly I can. It is right out there, not quite 
so big as it really is. I can see every dish as clearly 
as if I were there. I could put my finger on the 
very nose of the teapot or count the scallops in the 
fruit-dish on the corner." 

"Are all you people like that?" asked Arthur, in 
amazement. 

"I'm not so good at seeing things when they aren't 
there as Mrs. Elkin is," said Miss Atwell. "I can 
see certain very common things, like the rooms at 
home, the faces of my friends; but I can't hold them 
steadily before me, or see everything clearly, and 
a good many things that I've seen I can't call up at 
iill, except about as Arthur does.' 

XQO 



The Human Nature Club loi 

* 'Can't you see the picture before you when you 
read a description of a landscape or house or person?" 
said Mrs. Elkin. ''For instance, take this: 

By night we lingered on the lawn, 

For underfoot the herb was dry; 

And genial warmth; and o'er the sky 
The silvery haze of summer drawn; 

And calm that let the tapers burn 

Unwavering: not a cricket chirred: 

The brook alone far-off was heard, 
And on the board the fluttering urn: 

And bats went round in fragrant skies, 
And wheel'd or lit the filmy shapes 
That haunt the dusk, with ermine capes 

And woolly breasts and beaded eyes; 

While now we sang old songs that pealed 
From knoll to knoll, where, couched at ease. 
The white kine glimmer'd, and the trees 

Laid their dark arms about the field. 

"I get patches here and there/* replied Miss 
Atwell, "but I can't get a complete picture, much 
less hold it." 

"I got practically no visual pictures at all from 
those words," said Arthur. "I can by trying work 
up a few images." 

"I can't understand your case, Arthur. I don't 
see how any one can get any enjoyment out of poetry 
unless you see in your mind's eye the scenes described. 
Yet you do like poetry better than I. And I don't 
see what you mean by having an idea, say of a steam- 
engine, unless you have a picture of it before your 
mind's eye," 



I02 The Human Nature Club 

"When I think of a steam-engine,'* said Arthur, 
*'I feel the sound of the word in my mind, and have 
also vague feelings of the word's significance — that 
is, feelings which, if I attended to them and followed 
them out, would grow into 'big and heavy, noisy puffs 
of steam, wheels, etc., etc' Let me ask you some- 
thing. Can you get mental images of tastes and 
smells? Can you imagine the smell of cabbage or 
onions now?" 

**I can't," said Mr. Tasker. 

'*I can, easily," said Miss Clark. 

*'Well, we seem to be decidedly different in this 
matter of ideas of things when the things aren't 
there," said Arthur. "Suppose we start in definitely 
to see just what each one of us feels when he has 
what we've roughly called ideas. For instance, let 
each one think, 'Dr. Leighton will join the club soon.' 
What idea went with the Dr. LeightonV 

"I saw him," said Mrs. Elkin. 

'*I saw him, also," said Miss Clark. 

*'I saw the words 'Dr. Leighton' about a foot from 
my eyes," said Mr. Henshaw. 

"I merely felt myself articulating the words," said 
Arthur, "and hearing their sound." 

"It was about so with me," said Miss Atwell 

"Now think this thought," said Arthur. "'The 
band played Yankee Doodle Came to Town.' How 
did you feel?" 

"I imagined the sound of the melody and the sight 
of a band with red coats," said his mother. 

"My thought of the 'Yankee Doodle' was of its 
sound," said Mrs. Elkin. 



The Human Nature Club 103 

**I saw the words, as before,*' said Mr. Henshaw. 

*'I don't believe," said Mr. Tasker, '*that we're 
getting much out of this, except that people differ 
very widely in the nature of their ideas or mental 
images. Suppose we leave this, and let me write to 
my college chum to see whether he can't tell us the 
important facts about it. I don't believe we know 
enough to clear this matter up. We can afford to 
take to-night to talk over the results of previous meet- 
ings. " This proposal was accepted, and the meeting 
became informal. 

The next week Mr. Tasker brought a bulky letter 
from his friend, and read it to the club. 

*''My Dear Frank: 

"I was very much interested in what you wrote me 
about the Human Nature Club, and am very glad to 
send you some notes about our feelings of things when 
they are not actually present. 

'*We have feelings of sights, sounds, tastes, smells, 
touches, etc., when they are really present, which we 
may call sensations. We also have feelings of sights, 
sounds, movements, tastes, smells, touches, etc., when 
they aren't there in reality, but only, as we say, in 
our imaginations. Let us call these feelings mental 
images. Sensations, then, are feelings of things that 
are there; mental images are feelings of things that 
are not there, and are known not to be. When one 
imagines the taste of salt, he knows that the feeling 
he has isn't the taste of real salt. If, though there 
were no salt there, the man thought that he tasted 
real salt, we should say that he bad a hallucination. 



I04 The Human Nature Club 

Thus a mental image differs from a hallucination in 
that the latter is a feeling of a thing as present, as 
existing, though it is really imaginary. 

'*Now, for every real thing you've had sensations 
of, you may have a corresponding mental image. If 
you've seen a monkey, you may have a mental image 
(here a visual one) of the monkey when he's out of 
sight. If you've heard a name or a noise or a tune, 
you may later have in memory a mental image (here 
an auditory image) of that sound or tune. If you've 
ever played tennis, and had the sensations of move- 
ment involved, you may later have mental images 
(here motor images) of those movements, and so on 
with the rest. For every kind of sensation there may 
be a corresponding kind of image. So we speak of — 

(i) Visual images — /. ^. , mental images of sights. 

(2) Auditory or audible images — /. ^. , mental 
images of sounds. 

(3) Motor images — /. ^., mental images of feel- 
ings of movement. 

(4) Tactile or touch images — /. ^., mental images 
of touches, pressure, rough, smooth, etc. 

(5) Gustatory or taste images — /. ^., mental 
images of tastes and flavors. 

(6) Olfactory or smell images — /. <f., mental 
images of odors, etc. 

*'Now, if we take any one of these sorts of imagi- 
nation, we shall find that people possess it in very dif- 
ferent degrees. In some it may be absent. Take 
images of smell. Some people have them very clearly, 
but I have absolutely none. 

''Again, take images of movement. One man 



The Human Nature Club 105 

finds that when he thinks of a soldier marching, he 
naturally feels images of movements in his own limbs. 
Another can only with difficulty call up any such 
images. So also one can imagine his hand to be icy 
cold, whereas another cannot. Individuals, then, as 
you found in your own club, differ very widely in the 
degree to which they possess each sort of imagination. 
You may find as much difference to exist between 
Mrs. Elkin and Arthur as between the two following 
cases, which I quote from James's ^Principles of Psy- 
chology,' Vol. II, pp. 56, 57. 

'' *The good visualizer says: *'This morning's 
breakfast-table is both dim and bright. It is dim if 
I try to think of it when my eyes are open upon any 
object; it is perfectly clear and bright if I think of it 
with my eyes closed. — All the objects are clear at 
once, yet when I confine my attention to any one 
object it becomes far more distinct. — I have more 
power to recall color than any other one thing: if, 
for example, I were to recall a plate decorated with 
flowers, I could reproduce in a drawing the exact 
tone, etc. The color of anything that was on the 
table is perfectly vivid. — There is very little limita- 
tion to the extent of my images: I can see all four 
sides of a room, I can see all four sides of two, three, 
four, even more rooms, with such distinctness that if 
you should ask me what was in any particular place 
in anyone, or ask me to count the chairs, etc., I could 
do it without the least hesitation. — The more I learn 
by heart, the more clearly do I see images of my 
pages. Even before I can recite the lines, I see them 
SO that I could give them very slowly word for word^ 



io6 The Human Nature Club 

but my mind is so occupied in looking at my printed 
image that I have no idea of what I am saying, of the 
sense of it, etc. When I first found myself doing this, 
I used to think it was merely because I knew the lines 
imperfectly; but I have quite convinced myself that 
I really do see an image. The strongest proof that 
such is really the fact is, I think, the following: 

*''*'! can look down the mentally seen page and see 
the words that commence all the lines, and from any 
one of these words I can continue the line. I find 
this much easier to do if the words begin in a straight 
line than if there are breaks. Example: 

Etant fait 

Tous 

A des 

Que fit 

Ceres a 

Avec 

Un fleur 

Comma .- 
(La Fontaine, 8, IV)." 



( ( ( r 



'The poor visualizer says: '*I am unable to form 
in my mind's eye any visual likeness of the table 
whatever. After many trials I can only get a hazy 
surface, with nothing on it or about it. I can see no 
variety in color, and no positive limitations in extent, 
while I cannot see what I see well enough to deter- 
mine its position in respect to my eye or to endow 
it with any quality of size. I am in the same position 
as to the word dog. I cannot see it in my mind*s eye 
at all ; and so cannot tell whether I should have to run 
my eye along it, if I did see it." * *■ 



The Human Nature Club 107 

''''Imagery connected with words. — Most of our think- 
ing is done in words, and so an important part of our 
imagery is our images of words. These may be (i) 
visual, (2) auditory or (3) motor. One person may 
see the word mentally, another may hear its sound, 
another may feel his larynx and lips and tongue 
move as they would if he said the word, another per- 
son's images of words may be a mixture of two or 
three of these. When, for instance, I think of any 
word, my image is partly of the sound of the word, 
partly of feelings in my mouth and throat. A blind 
person who had learned to read by touch might have 
touch images of words. 

*'As to your question about the superiority of this 
form of imagery over other forms, I would say that 
though visual images may often be handy, they do 
not seem to be necessarily the best sort of images. 
Some of the best painters have no visual imagery 
worth speaking of. Scientific men in general have far 
less of it than ignorant men. The real test of one's 
thinking about any question is the judgments he 
makes and the acts he is led to, not the kind of 
images he thinks in. If I meet a man who cries to me, 
*Your horse has broken pasture,' it makes little odds 
whether I remember his words as a visual picture of 
a capering quadruped out in the road or as a picture of 
so many letters of type, or as a set of auditory images, 
or what not, so long as I judge that means must be 
taken to recover the horse, and act accordingly. 

'*To sum up what I've said: 

I. There are as many different kinds of mental 
images as there are of sensations. 



io8 The Human Nature Club 

2. Not all people possess all kinds. 

3. People also differ in the degree to which they 
possess any one kind. 

4. A notable case of difference is in images of 
words. These may be visual, auditory, or motor, or 
a mixture of all three sorts. 

5. No one sort of images need be better than 
another sort. 

*'I send a copy of Mr. Galton's questions concern- 
ing imagery. If you care to study deeper into the 
matter, the best way will be for every one to answer 
these questions, and then to compare notes. 
**Very truly, 

''Lawrence Stamm. " 

"I suppose that finishes this matter of memory and 
the side issues it has led us into," said Mr. Tasker. 

"Not quite yet, I think," said Arthur. "I have 
an observation which seems to show that our study of 
ideas is still incomplete. We talked as if the ques- 
tion was, *What imagery has a man?' 'What images of 
sights, sounds, touches, etc., pass through his mind?' 
That's not the whole story. The image one has of 
the word man is the same, no matter which of these 
three sentences you read, but your thought of man is 
different in each: 

" 'Man! how wonderful thou art!' 

" 'Man is a two-legged animal.' 

" 'Man! get out of my office!' 

"The same word may carry different thoughts, 
because we feel not only the mental image, but also 
the reference or meaning it has. We feel in the first 



The Human Nature Club 109 

case that we refer to or mean man in the abstract, 
a typical man; in the second case, that we refer to all 
men, mean any man that you chance to take; in the 
third place, we mean just the one tramp or loafer that 
is bothering us. Isn't that so?" 

*'0f course. The minute you think about it, you 
see that it's true," said Mr. Tasker. **I should say 
that often the feeling of meaning or reference is more 
important than the image itself. In fact, we couldn't 
think of men in general, dogs in general, houses in 
general, unless we had these feelings of the general 
reference of our idea. P"or instance, when we think, 
'A stone house is an expensive thing,' the image may 
be of some one house or of just the word house, but 
we feel that we mean all stone houses." 

"I'd like to call up one other thing before we con- 
sider the whole matter of learning by ideas complete," 
said Miss Atwell. *'You remember that most of Mr. 
Tasker's ideas were 'ideas of the fact that,' and that 
in studying our deliberate thinking we saw that we 
generally thought in questions and statements, had 
feelings of 'is' and 'is not,' 'is like' and 'is unlike,' 
etc., feelings which we decided to call 'judgments.' 
Now, if it is true that most of our real thinking is in 
the form of judgments, it seems to support Professor 
Stamm's statement that it doesn't so much matter 
what sort of imagery we have so long as we get to the 
right judgments. I say, 'What did you have for 
breakfast?' Mrs. Elkin has an image of the table, 
and sees the different foods; Arthur sees no such 
thing; his image may be only of the sound of the 
words oatmeal, coffee, etc., yet his judgments may 



no The Human Nature Club 

be just as correct as Mrs. Elkin's. The important 
thing of all in correct thinking would seem to be, as 
he says, the conclusion you reached, not the kind of 
imagery which helped you to reach it." 

'*Is there anything more to be added? If not, 
I suggest that TVEr. Tasker sum up for us all our con- 
clusions about our learning things by ideas. We've 
been at this question for six weeks, and it won't hurt 
at least one of us to have the whole thing clearly in 
mind before we start on the miscellaneous topics of 
which the question-box is full." 

The editor of the proceedings of the club finds 
Mr. Tasker's extemporaneous outline a bit vague, and 
so has taken the liberty of modifying it somewhat. 

People do some things — 

{a) Without learning them at all, because they 
inherit the nervous connections which bring those acts 
to pass. 

They learn some things — 

(I?) By trial and the confirmation of successes; 
Other things — 

(c) By mere imitation; 

And still others, including most of our acts — 

(d) By getting certain ideas, by thinking about the 
case. 

This last sort of human activity is complex, and 
depends on a number of general factors, viz: 

I. Sensations, or in terms of what happens in the 
nerve-cells, excitement of the brain processes from 
without, action in the cells coming from eye, ear, 
skin, etc. 



The Human Nature Club ill 

2. Previous experiences, or in terms of what hap- 
pens in the nerve-cells, the connections already estab- 
lished in the brain. 

3. Attention, or in terms of what happens in the 
nerve-cells — we don't know what. 

4. Memories, imagery, or in terms of what hap- 
pens in the nerve-cells, excitement of brain processes 
from within. 

5. Feelings of meaning and judgment, or in terms 
of what happens in the nerve-cells — we don't know 
what. 

That is, a man's conduct depends on what outside 
things he feels, how he receives these sensations, 
whether he attends to them, what ideas or imagery 
they call up, what feelings of meaning go with these 
ideas and what judgments he makes. So each of 
these factors was studied by the club. Among the 
facts which they found out concerning them, the fol- 
lowing are the more important. 

A, Sensations. — Besides the commonly mentioned 
five senses, we have sensations of heat and of cold, 
of movement, of hunger, thirst, nausea, etc. 

One sensation may differ from another in — 

(i) Being of a different sense; 

(2) Being of a different quality within the same 
sense; 

(3) Being of a different intensity. 

One person may differ from another in — 
(i) The number of his senses; 

(2) The quality of his sensations; 

(3) Their range; 

(4) The delicacy of his discrimination. 



112 The Human Nature Club 

Our sensations are important not only because 
they furnish many of the feelings which cause and 
guide our actions, but also because they are the ma- 
terial out of which we construct our knowledge of our 
bodies and of the outside world. 

B. The structure of the brain to which a sense 
stimulus comes, influences the reaction to be expected 
quite as truly as does the nature of the stimulus itself. 
The brain is modified by everything that happens to 
it, and so people with different previous experiences 
will in the same situation act differently, (i) The 
general bias of the mind, (2) its equipment in any 
particular field, and (3) the ideas which temporarily 
possess it, all may make a difference in the thought 
or action of the person. 

C. Attention. — Our sensations and ideas are not all 
on an equality. Some are especially potent or pre- 
dominant and occupy the chief places in conscious- 
ness. They are, we say, attended to. 

What happens when this occurs is mainly that the 
'attended to' ideas are clearly in mind and others 
are inhibited. In some cases the idea gains attention 
of itself, while in others we feel effort in keeping it 
clearly before us. 

We improve our powers of attention by learning to 
attend without effort to the right things so far as pos- 
sible, and to stand the disagreeableness of the feeling 
of effort where we have to. 

D. Me7nory, the Association of Ideas and Mental 
Imagery. — Feelings are aroused from the inside in the 
form of memories and mental images, as well as from 
the outside in the form of sensations. Connections 



The Human Nature Club 113 

once made between nerve-cells are more or less per- 
manent. The'^retention and recall of ideas are due 
to this fact. Ideas which have gone with certain 
ideas are called up by them. Not all of the first idea 
need have been connected in the mind with the 
second. Sometimes only a part of the brain process 
corresponding to it has been connected with the brain 
process corresponding to the second. 

If one idea has been connected with several other 
ideas, it will, other things being equal, call up its (i) 
most habitual, (2) most recent, (3) most vivid, and 
(4) most emotionally congruous associate. But (5) 
the mere accidental activity of the brain will often 
play a part, and (6) our ideas run in systems cor- 
responding to different general mental attitudes, so 
that the particular system of thought which prevails 
will also help decide what idea shall come up. 

In voluntary, purposive, logical thinking, the 
course of our ideas is determined by constant selection 
from among this spontaneous flow, and by the inhibi- 
tion of irrelevant ideas. 

The quality of the ideas that fill people's minds 
varies Vvndely with individuals. Some have more 
visual images, others more auditory, etc., etc. The 
vividness and fidelity of these images are also subject 
to wide variation. It is not of much importance what 
kind or what degree of imagery one has, provided he 
is led to the right judgments and acts. 

Feelings of Meanifig. — The same mental image may 
exert widely differing effects on thought and action, 
according to the feeling of meaning or reference which 
goes with it. 



114 The Human Nature Club 

The same mental image may mean a single definite 
object, or any object of a class, or a typical object, or 
an abstract quality. In our logical thinking, the 
feeling of meaning is often more important than the 
mental imao:e or sensation itself. 



CHAPTER X 

OUR EMOTIONS 

**To-night,'* said Miss Fairbanks, "we are going 
to find out what we can about our emotions, about 
love and hate and anger and jealousy and sympathy 
and patriotism, etc., etc. I have here the various 
observations along this line which have been handed in 
from time to time. I think, however, I won't read 
them all now, because they may come in more perti- 
nently after we get started. There are two or three 
that point to the same fact, and we'll start with those. 

**Why do we tremble and grow pale when we are 
afraid? 

'*I've noticed that when any one is very sad and 
gloomy his head is almost always a bit bowed, his 
breathing isn't full and deep, and there are wrinkles 
in his forehead. 

'*Why are some people able to conceal their emo- 
tions so much better than others; that is, conceal the 
bodily expression of the emotion? 

*'These questions all point to the fact that natu- 
rally any emotion goes with some change in the body. 
The thing is so common that we don't think about 
it, but when you do, it seems a very remarkable thing 
that when we feel sad our lachrymal glands should 
pour forth a fluid, that when we feel joyous the cor- 
ners of our mouths should turn up and our hearts beat 
faster, that when we feel angry our teeth should 

115 



ii6 The Human Nature Club 

clinch. We certainly aren't taught to make such 
movements. We are taught not to, and we decrease 
them as we grow older." 

''These bodily expressions of the emotions are 
instinctive, I suppose," said Arthur. ''We cry or 
laugh or pucker our lips or breathe hard or contract 
our chest or blush without learning, just because we 
are born with brains which are so made that certain 
circumstances call forth these acts. They are on 
a level with the walking and reaching and curiosity of 
the human infant. The reason why emotions go with 
bodily expressions is that we are so made that they 
do. How we come to be made that way we'll have 
to leave to the people who know about that." 

"You are quite right there," said Dr. Leighton. 
"These expressions of our emotions are born in us as 
a gift of nature. What bothers me is what the feel- 
ings, the emotions themselves, are due to. You 
taught me last time about sensations and imagery 
and feelings of meaning and judgment. One can see 
how at the bottom they all come from stimuli from 
the sense organs. But these anger, joy, sorrow feel- 
ings don't seem at all like them." 

'"Give me the floor for a while," said Mr. Tasker. 
"I've been saving up something I read over a month 
ago until the time was ripe, and now it will fit in per- 
fectly. Our emotions are sensations, only they are 
sensations not from eyes or ears or nose or mouth 
alone, but mainly from our hearts, stomachs, intes- 
tines, lungs, muscles, blood-vessels, etc. — in a word, 
from what an old friend of mine calls our 'innards.' 
They are sensations of the bodily changes you've been 



The Human Nature Club 117 

talking about. Just as a piece of sugar in your mouth 
gives you the feeling of sweetness, so a contracted 
chest, furrowed brow, stooping, droopy position, and 
a lot of happpenings in the heart, blood-vessels, etc., 
give you the feeling of sadness. Add to the outward 
noticeable bodily changes a lot of inward changes — 
which I'll presently prove do occur — and your sensa- 
tions due to these bodily changes are the emotion. 
Listen to what Professor James says: 

"* My theory .... isthdit the bodily changes follow 
directly the perception of the exciting fact^ and that our 
feeling of these same changes as they occur is the emotion. 
Common sense says, we lose our fortune, are sorry 
and weep; we meet a bear, are frightened and run; 
we are insulted by a rival, are angry and strike. 
The hypothesis here to be defended says that this 
order of sequence is incorrect, that the one mental 
state is not immediately induced by the other, that 
the bodily manifestations must first be interposed be- 
tween, and that the more rational statement is that 
we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, 
afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike, 
or tremble because we are sorry, angry, or fearful, as 
the case may be. Without the bodily states following 
on the perception, the latter would be purely cognitive 
in form, pale, colorless, destitute of emotional 
warmth. We might then see the bear and judge it 
best to run, receive the insult and deem it right to 
strike, but we should not actually feel afraid or 
angry.' "^ 

*" Briefer Course in Psychology," p. 375. 



ii8 The Human Nature Club 

'Then if you stopped these bodily activities, you 
would stop the emotion, of course." 

''Yes, generally. Just as you generally stop the 
sweet taste by rinsing the sugar out of your mouth. 
A person might have a hallucination of an emotion, 
just as we saw some people to have hallucinations of 
sight or taste. We can in dreams have emotions with- 
out their appropriate bodily happenings, just as we 
have sights with nothing really to be seen." 

"Why I asked was because this theory would ex- 
plain an observation I made. Will you read it. Miss 
Fairbanks? I put it down exactly as the person told 
it to me. It's on that yellow paper." 

Miss Fairbanks read: "I used to have sudden 
attacks of terrible dread. The emotion was tremen- 
dously strong, but I found that if I could regain my 
ordinary manner of breathing the dread would go 
away. Apparently the feeling was caused by the 
quickened heart-beat and spasmodic breathing, so 
that it died out as soon as I got them under control. " 

"Your theory would also explain a very rare case 
which I happened to have the luck to see," said Dr. 
Leighton. "It was a man in a hospital. His body 
was anaesthetic except the head; that is, he could not 
feel what went on in his trunk or limbs — e. g.^ could 
not feel his heart beat or his chest move in breathing. 
The following was the substance of the physician's 
description of his emotional life. 

"He is incapable of interest in anything whatever. 
Nothing gives him pleasure. 'I am insensible to 
everything; nothing interests me. I love nobody; 
neither do I dislike anybody.' He does not even 



The Human Nature Club 119 

know whether it would give him pleasure to get well, 
and when I tell him that his cure is possible, it awak- 
ens no reaction, not even one of surprise or doubt. 
The only thing that seems to move him a little is the 
visit of his wife. When she appears in the room, *it 
gives me a stroke in the stomach,' he says; 'but as 
soon as she is there, I wish her away again.' He 
often has a fear that his daughter may be dead. 'If 
she should die, I believe I should not survive her, 
although if I were never to see her again, // would 
make no difference to me, ' . . . . Nothing surprises or 
astonishes him. "^ 

"We would say that this man had no emotions 
because he hadn't any sensations from his internal 
bodily organs. He couldn't feel his heart-beats or 
diaphragm or any of the activities of his internal 
viscera (that is the scientific word for 'innards,' Tas- 
ker), and so had no emotions." 

. "But," said Miss Fairbanks, "if sensations of these 
bodily changes are the emotion, a person couldn't be 
angry unless these bodily changes occurred, could 
he?," 

"No; and the facts seem to show that he can't." 
"I don't think the facts do show that. We can be 
angry without showing it. Take a lady when some 
one spills a cup of coffee on her best gown at a party. 
She smiles, and says, 'Oh! that doesn't matter. It 
will come out all right,' as affably as you please, but 
really she feels like tearing the man's hair off his head. 
How can you explain that?" 

^Dr. Sollier, quoted by W. James in the *' Psychological Review," Vol. I, 
p. 528. 



iao The Human Nature Club 

'*You haven't shown that the inside bodily changes 
don't take place. She doesn't growl or show her teeth 
or clinch her hands, but her chest may be in a tumult. 

•"The facts may be as you men say, but it seems 
nicer to think that our emotions are caused directly 
by ideas. I'd rather think the feeling of sadness was 
caused by a sad idea; for then there's some sense 
in being sad. We are supposed to be rational beings, 
but on your theory we might be sad when we had no 
real reason to be, if only somehow the proper bodily 
states occurred." 

**You've dug a pit for yourself, Miss Fairbanks, if 
you'll allow me to say so. We are sad when we have 
no real reason to be. One of the saddest women 
I ever saw had a fine husband, fine children, every- 
thing to make her comfortable, nothing to repent of. 
She was brought to the hospital when I was a medical 
student, her features drawn, her body bent, her whole 
expression showing the utmost anguish. When you 
asked what the trouble was, she'd say, 'Oh! oh! 
I don't know. I feel awfully, I feel awfully.' She 
was sad, though she had no sad idea that you could 
discover. After a few days her feeling of sadness 
created for itself an appropriate idea, but at first she 
was just possessed by a motiveless sadness. 

''On the other hand, some of the happiest people 
in the world are poor wretched creatures who have 
the least right to be. Miserable men at the door of 
death from general paralysis of the insane, with no 
power or prospects left, will smile and tell you, *I feel 
fine. I could lift ten thousand pounds. I ii^ver felt 
more delightful and joyful in my life.' " 



The Human Nature Club 121 

**I see/* said Miss Fairbanks, ''that my comment 
was foolish. Just drop it, please, and go ahead as if 
I hadn't spoken.'* 

''Professor James lays great stress," said Mr. 
Tasker, "on the fact that if you imagine an emotion, 
say a feeling of ludicrousness, and then remove from 
the picture of the emotion thus called up, all the 
bodily sensations — remove, that is, the feeling of 
shaking sides, of actual laughter, of open mouth, of 
head thrown back, etc. — you find that the emotion 
you imagined is gone, that all that is left is a mere 
judgm^ent or notion that the thing is funny. So, he 
says, it would be with the real emotion. If we could 
take away the bodily sensations, nothing would be 
left of it save the mere opinion that the thing was 
amusing." 

''Would he think that such feelings as the sense of 
duty, patriotism, interest, or the enjoyment of litera- 
ture or music were due to sensations from the body, 
or wouldn't he include these finer feelings under the 
emotions?" 

"He would say that if they had any richness and 
thrill of feeling about them, we'd find bodily sensa- 
tions making them up. I myself don't see much sense 
in trying to think out what, for instance, 'the feeling 
of patriotism' is due to, for no two people mean just 
the same thing by the phrase. In one case it may be 
rapturous pride in one's country, and then you do 
find the swelling bosom, etc., of pride. In another 
case*it may be just the feeling, 'My country is all 
right, and I'll stand up for it.' In this case there'd 
be really no emotion at all." 



122 The Human Nature Club 

'^Speaking of the enjoyment of music, one some- 
times has a whole lot of bodily sensations mixed in as 
parts of his feeling, I think,'* said Miss Fairbanks. 
**And then, again, you'll have nothing but a sort of 
exalted sensory appreciation of the harmony." 

'*I don't believe," said Mr. Henshaw, '*that we'd 
better try to clear up these subtle feelings like inter- 
est or the sense of duty or appreciation of a poem. 
They are off to one side of our general topic, the 
ordinary plain cases of typical emotions." 

''I've been thinking," said Arthur, ''that if our 
emotions are just sensations of. our bodily condition, 
we can see clearly a way to control and educate them. 
If you want to get rid of the blues, throw back your 
shoulders, hold up your head, take deep breaths, 
smooth out the wrinkles in your brow, and you ought 
to feel more cheerful." 

''You do, too. I've tried it. But sometimes you 
can't keep up the new bodily conditions. You fall 
right back into the gloomy attitude again." 

"I was going on to say, if you wish to feel affection 
for some one and can't, you ought to be helped by 
always smiling and acting otherwise as if you liked 
them." 

"I don't think that will work," said Miss Atwell. 
"And I don't think that in general your method of 
controlling emotion by controlling the physical expres- 
sion will work except to a limited extent, for the very 
good reason that we can control only a few of the 
bodily conditions. The actions of all those viscera we 
talked about aren't much under our control. We can 
manage our breathing and a few things, but our emo- 



The Human Nature Club 123 

tions depend on too many bodily activities that we 
can't control." 

'^You'll admit, though, that we ought to try this 
method as far as possible." 

*'Yes." 

''I have another method to add to it," said Mr. 
Elkin. ''A friend of mine claims that by just stop- 
ping and analyzing any emotion, by looking squarely 
at it, and noticing just how it feels, what it's made of, 
he can get over any emotion. He calls it taking 
a humorous view of himself. If he feels very angry 
when he doesn't wish to, he stops and sort of says to 
himself, 'Great perturbation, heated feeling, impulse 
to throw chairs. Remarkable state of mind. I'll feel 
my pulse.' He turns the tumult of feeling into a lot 
of elements, and that seems to stop it. I believe 
there's something in it, too." 

*'I don't," said Mrs. Ralston. ''I think the best 
way is to avoid occasions that will excite any undesir- 
able emotion, and to put yourself in such conditions 
as will naturally arouse the good ones. If a bad one 
comes, just don't attend to it; leave it alone." 

''We have three recipes for controlling our emo- 
tions now," said Mr. Henshaw, "and they may all be 
successful, it seems to me. We may control the 
bodily expression, or destroy an emotion by picking it 
to pieces, or keep out of the way of bad ones and in 
the way of good ones. Let's all try the different 
ways and see how they work. I suppose a fit of the 
blues, or a case of bad temper or anything of the 
sort, will never again exist in the mind of any member 
of this club." 



124 The Human Nature Club 

'*It would be a good thing for Americans if they 
could control their nervousness and worry/* remarked 
the doctor. ''What would your Professor James pre- 
scribe for that, do you suppose, Tasker?" 

*'I don't suppose; I know. He has had that very 
question in mind, and says that making slow, calm 
movements, letting your muscles be quiet and flabby 
when you're not using them for some definite purpose, 
relaxing your brow and face into flat expressionless- 
ness unless you really have something to express, will 
all help rid us of nervousness, because it — the feel- 
ing — is in part a feeling of muscular tensions. We 
would learn to take things easily mentally by taking 
our physical life easily. It will be worth the while of 
all of us to read the chapter entitled 'The Gospel of 
Relaxation,' in his 'Talks to Teachers on Psychology.* 
I have the book." 

"I want to come back to the point from which we 
started out to study our emotions, their influence on 
our conduct. Isn't it true that people often have the 
feeling of sympathy without being thereby led to do 
anything sympathetic, the feeling of love without 
being led to act more kindly, etc.?" 

"It surely is, Arthur," said Mr. Tasker. *'I once 
tutored a boy who was brimming over with feelings of 
love for his mother, but who nevertheless amused him- 
self by shooting at the parlor ornaments with his 
revolver. We all know folks in churches whose 
hearts are simply chockfull of fine emotions, from 
whom you can't get a cent or a stroke of work." 

"I once was waited on by a committee of anti-vivi- 



The Human Nature Club 125 

sectionists, " said Dr. Leighton. **They wanted me 
to help their cause in certain ways, and they evidently 
felt terribly about the dear animals, as they called 
them. I wanted to see how much in earnest they 
were, so I said: ^Ladies, I am willing to give the 
amount of time and effort needed for what you desire, 
if, as I suppose, you are willing to help me in a cer- 
tain matter. I know a child who can be saved from 
lifelong misfortune by an operation. It will cost about 
sixty dollars to get him to New York and back and 
buy what is needed.' The head of the committee rose 
majestically, and said: *We did not come here to bar- 
gain^ Mr. Leighton. If you don't choose to relieve 
the suffering of the poor dumb brutes of your own 
will, why so much the worse for you.' I bowed 
politely, and saved up the righteous indignation which 
I felt until they had gone." 

"Isn't it fair to say," said Miss Atwell, **that our 
emotions are useful only as they give us innocent 
pleasure or serve as impulses to useful conduct? They 
seem to me to be in a way like steam. It isn't of any 
use for steam to just be; it must make some wheels 
go. If it just sizzles and hisses and displays itself, it 
only wears out the boiler." 

''I believe that," said Mr. Henshaw; ''and I don't 
see much justice in making a fuss over what people 
feel. If a man treats me and everybody else rightly, 
both when I'm looking and when I'm not, what do 
I care what he feels? If a man serves his country 
well, what odds does it make whether he feels throbs 
of patriotism or not? The action's the thing, and the 



126 The Human Nature Club 

only value of the feeling is as an impulse to it. If 

you can have the right action without any feeling, 

you just save yourself so much chance of becoming 
silly/' 

NOTES BY THE EDITOR* 

In this chapter three topics are discussed: 

1. The cause of our emotional feeHngs. 

2. The means of controlling them. 

3. Their usefulness in human life. 

Professor James is the authority for their conclusions about 
the first topic, and the editor thinks Mr. Henshaw's opinion 
about (2), as given on page 123, and Miss Atwell's about (3), 
as given on page 125, are as satisfactory as any equally brief 
statements of his own would be. 

James's " Briefer Course," pp. 374-390, may well be read in 
connection with the chapter. 



CHAPTER XI 

PURPOSIVE ACTION 

*'It strikes me," said Mr. Elkin, ''that we haven't 
yet touched on the most important aspect of human 
nature at all — the will. It doesn't make much odds 
what a man knows or how he feels, provided he 
chooses the right line of conduct, provided his will is 
healthy and leads him in the right direction. I'd like 
to know what makes the difference between a good 
and bad will, a strong or weak will. I've been on 
the lookout to see, but I have no observations worth 
reporting." 

'*What do you mean by a person's 'will'?" asked 
Miss Atwell. 

"I mean whatever makes him do things." 

"But we have touched on that. We found that 
a man did a great many things just because his nerve- 
cells were so connected that a certain situation led to 
a certain act. We breathe, cry, weep, laugh, etc., 
just because we inherit as nature's gift to us certain 
connections between nerve-cells and muscles. We 
also do things from imitation." 

"I suppose I really mean the things that we do 
when we foresee and control our acts; when, for 
instance, we murder a man, or write a letter or buy 
a suit of clothes, all the really complex acts that we 
perform." 

"But," said Arthur, "we can perform very com- 

127 



128 The Human Nature Club 

plex acts without really 'willing' to do them. You 
know you and I were talking about this thing the other 
day. Well, I decided to see how many things I really 
willed in a day. I found they were very few. As 
I got out of bed, I thought, *Did I will to do that?' 
and observed that I hadn't. The mere sight of the 
clock gave me the idea of getting up, and up I got, 
without 'willing* anything. The mere sight of my 
clothes led me to put them on, and amongst all the 
numerous operations that I went through before 
I reached my seat at the breakfast-table, there was 
only one case of willing. I did deliberately decide to 
put on a certain necktie, because I wanted to wear the 
thing out. In that one case I felt that I really willed 
to do something. In all the other cases I either acted 
automatically or else the mere idea of doing a certain 
thing or the sight of some object connected with the 
act led me to do it without any decision or act of will 
of my own. So on through the day. The thought, 
*What time is it?' suffices to make me open my watch 
without there being any exertion of will power or any 
feeling of 'Lo, verily, I will do so and so.' An idea 
calls up a movement just as an idea calls up an idea." 
''You can see that rather well in some cases we 
doctors have to deal with," added Dr. Leighton. 
"Some people do things just when they will not to. A 
man came to me once who said, 'Doctor, either I'm 
the biggest fool on earth or there's something the 
matter with my brain. Every night I have to go 
down to lock the door a dozen times. I'll lock it and 
go to bed, and then up will bob the idea, *'Go down 
and lock the door," and 1*11 find myself walking down- 



The Human Nature Club 129 

stairs like an idiot. I will to stay in bed, but some- 
how the idea of looking after that door possesses me, 
and I have to work the idea out in action. The worst of 
it is that this absurd thing will happen ten, sometimes 
twenty, times in a single night.* It's evident that in 
such cases the mere idea of doing a thing suffices to 
bring the act to pass, apart from any act of will. We 
all, I think, have experiences which border on such 
morbid activity. Who, for instance, has not stepped 
over a crack in the sidewalk, or touched a lamp-post, 
or counted the globes in a chandelier just because the 
idea struck him. Our minds as a whole are healthy, 
and we don't follow out in action ideas that are too 
absurd, but we do tend to act out all the ideas we 
have unless we are prevented by some other idea. 
I well remember how once, when a boy, I saw a hay- 
stack, and was struck by the idea of setting fire to it. 
I had all I could do for a minute or two to with- 
hold from the act. So I feel sure that we must agree 
with Arthur that we do all sorts of things, complex as 
well as simple, without willing or deciding about them 
at all. As he says, any idea that has gone with an 
act tends to bring about that act, just as an idea that 
has gone with another idea tends to call it up in the 
mind." 

'*That would go to show that the *as a man thinketh 
in his heart, so is he/ was a good account of human 
nature, wouldn't it? A man with good thoughts 
would do good deeds, if, as you say, every idea tends 
to realize itself in action?" said Mrs. Ralston. 

*'Yes; provided that he had customarily done good 
deeds in connection with those thoughts. If, for 



ijo The Human Nature Club 

example, a man in a car thinks, *That lady should 
have a seat,' and then gets up and if he repeatedly 
makes the connection between that thought and that 
act, after a while the mere presence of the idea, 'Give 
up my seat', will bring about the act without his 
willing it at all. But suppose he repeatedly has the 
idea, but on all occasions sits still. Then the pres- 
ence of that good idea won't imply any good action." 

'*You could say, couldn't you," said Mr. Tasker, 
"that he had not only the good idea, but also another 
bad idea — namely, *But I won't give it to her,' or 
'But I'll sit still.' What were you going to say, Miss 
Atwell?" 

''Nothing now. I was intending to say that people 
could be chockfuU of fine thoughts and never put any 
of them into action, but you and Mr. Henshaw have 
explained that by showing that they've never con- 
nected these thoughts with the corresponding acts and 
may have in mind also ideas of not doing the good 
things they talk about. To turn back to our main 
question, I'd like to ask what happens when we really 
do intend or decide or will to do a thing. We all 
agree that in some cases this occurs, that we aren't 
always doing things just because an idea comes up 
in our mind that tends to work itself out in a certain 
act, or because of imitation, or because of inherited 
tendencies. We sometimes act deliberately as a result 
of choice. Now what happens in us in such cases?" 

*'Yes," said Mrs. Elkin; "take a concrete case 
and explain what happened in my mind when yester- 
day I deliberated whether to take Helen to Springfield 
to the dentist's or to stay at home and rest. I thought 



The Human Nature Club 131 

of things on both sides of the question, and finally 
decided to stay and rest/* 

*' You'd better try to explain it first yourself," said 
Arthur. '*Then we'll all put our fingers in the pie 
later. At any rate, tell us what happened more 
exactly." 

**Well, the idea of going to Springfield had been 
in my mind for some time. At breakfast I thought, 
'I'd better take Helen this afternoon.' I then 
thought I would — that is, I had a feeling of consent, 
of 'all right.' of *let it be so,' as the idea came to me. 
But at lunch I felt tired, and as I thought of the trip 
I recalled some advice Dr. Leighton gave me a while 
ago — namely, 'Do just as little as you can, Mrs. Elkin; 
don't do to-day anything you can put off on some one 
else,' and I felt, 'Shall I go or stay at home?' The 
idea of staying at home made me think of the comfort 
of a restful afternoon in an arm-chair, but also of my 
duty to have Helen see the dentist, and of a number 
of other things, attractive and otherwise. After about 
five minutes of such deliberation I thought: 'Well, 
it doesn't much matter; some more convenient chance 
will come than this awfully wet day. I'll stay at 
home.' " 

'*Just what was your feeling, Mrs. Elkin, when at 
breakfast you willed to go, and at lunch to stay? 
I mean just the feeling of willing." 

"It seemed like a feeling of 'Do it,' 'Go ahead, 
'Let it be,' a feeling of consent to the realization of 
the idea then in mind, as I called it a minute ago." 

"Is that what we all feel when we will to do 
a thing?" asked Mr. Tasker. 



132 The Human Nature Club 

"It is with the worst half of the Elkin family," 
said Mr. Elkin. '^Instead of just having an idea and 
having it of its own accord bring about an act, as in 
the case we'd been talking about, you have, when you 
will an act, an idea plus this feeling of consent. You 
O. K. it, put in your mind a label ^approved' on the 
idea." 

The rest of the company agreed with this descrip- 
tion of the feeling of * willing, ' and Mr. Tasker con- 
tinued, ''If we could now see, first, how, when we 
deliberate or decide or choose, an idea gets this O. K., 
this label 'approved,' this feeling of consent, and 
second, why it then is acted out, we'd have a pretty 
satisfactory account of 'willing.' " 

"That isn't so very hard to see, is it?" said Arthur. 
"Isn't it just a matter of attention? An idea, we've 
seen, tends to be acted upon if nothing prevents — 
e, g., the idea of staying at home in the present case. 
Other ideas do prevent, by preventing it from monop- 
olizing attention, from possessing the mind. If some- 
how an idea does become strong enough to gain total 
predominance, to absorb the mind, it will be acted 
out, and with the removal of the ideas that before 
checked it, with this whole-hearted acceptance of it, 
comes the feeling of consent you talk about. That 
feeling is much the same, so far as I can see, as the 
feeling of belief. In both cases there is the absence 
of feelings of contradiction — in one case of an opin- 
ion, in the other of a course of action. When an idea 
leading to an act has to be attended to, to the exclu- 
sion of ideas of other courses of action, and is so 
attended to, it is acted out because checks previously 



The Human Nature Club 133 

existing are removed, and you feel the *0. K.,' be- 
cause that is a feeling which goes with unimpeded 
acceptance of an idea." 

**You mean," said Mr. Henshaw, *'that when we 
decide, for instance, to vote the Republican ticket, 
we really just attend to that idea, let it prevail in our 
minds, disregard conflicting ideas, such as to vote the 
Democratic ticket or not to vote at all. You mean 
that willing to do a thing is really attending to the 
idea of doing it, and that when we have done that 
much the idea will of itself lead to the appropriate act, 
just as you found when you watched 3^our own acts; 
just as, to take another example, the idea of its being 
lunch-time makes me put on my hat and leave the 
office." 

'^That's it. Ideas tend to result in action if they 
have the chance. Letting them possess one's mind 
gives them the chance." 

*'That explanation seems to fit what I've noticed 
in myself in cases where I exerted my will, as we'd 
ordinarily say, to do something that went 'against the 
grain,' " said Miss Fairbanks. *'I used to find it 
very hard to go through a certain sort ot practice at 
the piano. The time for it was from two till four in 
the afternoon. Now, when the time came, ideas of 
going out for a walk, of sewing that needed to be 
done, of making a call, of finishing some book I was 
reading, etc., would come up, and of course, also, the 
idea of sitting down to the piano and going over those 
abominable exercises. Now, as I said, it took consid- 
erable will power to make me attend to business, and 
my act was, just as Arthur says, an act of attention. 



134 The Human Nature Club 

If I could get and keep my mind on that piano-prac- 
tice idea and shut out those other ideas, I would find 
myself thrumming away. The struggle was to keep 
that idea in the focus of my consciousness, and keep 
those other ideas from appearing on the scene. Will- 
ing to practice rather than make calls, etc., was for 
me exactly attending to the former idea and exclud- 
ing others. " 

''That feeling of effort one has in willing is an 
interesting feeling,'* remarked Mrs. Elkin. ''I sup- 
pose weak-willed people can't stand the strain 
of it." 

''It's a lucky thing that it isn't a necessary accom- 
paniment of all our decisions. We don't always have 
it." 

"No; it's only in cases where we decide in contra- 
diction to some inborn impulse or regular habit," 
said Miss Atwell. "I feel no effort in deciding to eat 
my meals, or to read an interesting story, or to lie in 
bed in the morning. It's when we decide in favor of 
some far-off consideration or some general principle 
that doesn't appeal to our appetites or habits that the 
feeling of effort enters. It's just like the same feeling 
in attending to other ideas than those of acts. One 
has no feeling of effort when he attends to a fire-engine, 
or the taste of his food, or attractive scenery, or 
charming music. It's when the object is not in line 
with our inborn or acquired tastes and interests that 
we feel effort in attending to it. I suppose that the 
acts of will which for people in general require most 
effort are moral acts. Now they are par excellence 
acts where one's personal, selfish appetites and inter- 



The Human Nature Club 135 

ests are sacrificed for some general good, some uni- 
versal principle." 

''Besides this parallel between the feeling of effort 
or strain in attention in general and the same feeling 
in the attention involved in willing, we might make 
another," said Mr. Henshaw. ''We found that 
improvement in attentiveness meant (i) improve- 
ment in ability to stand the strain of inhibiting other 
ideas and impulses, and also (2) learning to attend to 
the right things. So improvement of our wills means 
increased ability to stand the painful feeling of effort 
and also the habit of welcoming ideas of the right 
acts; for example, attending or being possessed by 
the idea of working rather than that of dawdling. 
After a while a man may will the right acts without 
effort. The far-off moral considerations may by 
proper education come to take the chief place of their 
own accord. One may come to really be more inclined 
to study than to play. So much the better for him if 
he does. If one can will the right things without 
effort, without sacrifice, he's all the better off." 

"I think," said Arthur, "that we've now a fairly 
clear idea of what we mean by people's wills, and also 
of the many things we do without willing them. But 
if there is anything more to be said, let's have it. 
I might add that our study of attention and voluntary 
purposive thinking, and also of willing, has made it 
clear to me that not thinking certain things, not doing 
certain things, inhibiting^ as we've come to call it, is 
about as important a part of human nature, of mental 
life, as positive thinking or doing. What we neglect 
seems as important as what we select, and success in 



136 The Human Nature Club 

life seems due as much to leaving things out as to put^ 
ting them in. Attention to one idea is largely inhibi- 
tion of others. Reasoning is largely neglecting 
unessentials. Willing is largely rejecting certain 
ideas, motives and impulses. To adopt an Hibernian 
mode of expression, *What we are is largely what we 
are not!' Are there any other remarks?'* 

*'You remind me," said Miss Clark, **of an obser- 
vation which I dropped into the box long ago. May 
I look it up and read it to you? Here it is: 

" 'A lady of a very nervous organization would fre- 
quently, while at table, spend ten minutes deciding 
whether or not to eat oatmeal (or some such simple 
question). She would alternately think of reasons for 
and against the act, and would frequently be unable 
to act at all, until by diverting her attention from the 
matter altogether one impulse was allowed to prevail. 
In all sorts of things where her decision one way or 
the other was really of no consequence she seemed to 
have no power to make up her mind. If she started 
to decide one way, something would come up in her 
mind which would make her take back her decision. ' " 

*'This lady, I suppose, had too much, or rather, 
misplaced, inhibition. Whenever she thought of doing 
anything, some other idea would come up which would 
work against the thought." 

**Yes," said Dr. Leighton; *'her will was diseased 
in that any one idea aroused a lot of contradictory, 
inhibiting ideas, and her attention vacillated among 
them, not letting any one idea hold the field long 
enough to work out in action. I gave you a case of 
the exactly opposite tendency earlier in the evening, 



The Human Nature Club 137 

that of the man who had to go down to lock the door 
nights. In his case, not the inhibiting ideas, but the 
impelling ones, were too strong. His attention was 
too firmly possessed by a single idea." 

"Let's adjourn before we get too deep into the 
unhealthy side of human nature," said Mrs. Ralston. 
**You can talk that over by yourselves." 

NOTES BY THE EDITOR. 

Human conduct is, as the club found, a complex matter, 
(i) We do some things because we are made so that a certain 
situation calls forth a certain act; we do others (2) by accident; 
others (3) by force of imitation; others (4) because any idea 
which has in the past led to a certain act tends, when again 
present, to lead to that same act. Finally (5) we may, by con- 
trolling our ideas by attention, voluntarily choose certain acts 
— that is, will them. 

Willing a thing thus means attending to the idea of doing 
it. The effort of will is the effort of attention. Diseases or 
weaknesses of will are instances of defective impulsion or defec- 
tive inhibition. The man with the healthy will is the man in 
whom natural impulses are strong but under control, and in 
whom inhibition is not excessive or misplaced. 



CHAPTER XII 

HABIT AND CHARACTER 

*'In discussing the will and its influence on our 
conduct I think we left out one rather important mat- 
ter/' said Mr. Tasker, as soon as the club was called 
to order. *'After an act or a series of acts has been 
done several times as a result of willing it, it tends 
to become habitual, to be done without much thought, 
as a matter of course. To put the thing exactly, any 
acts or series of acts which have been done in a given 
situation tend to be done again when the same situa- 
tion recurs.'' 

**But that isn't true," was the quick response from 
Miss Atwell. ^'Suppose I face the situation, *sight of 
a new fruit,' and my act is to take and eat it. Sup- 
pose it tastes very nasty. Now let me next day be in 
that same situation. Will I take and eat the fruit? 
Not at all. For the previous result was disagreeable. 
Only when the result of the act is pleasurable or 
indifferent is a habit formed." 

''I'll accept that amendment," said Mr. Tasker. 
''I remember now that we made that distinction at 
one of our first meetings. But you must agree to 
amend // by saying that often if one does repeat the 
act many times, its result may come to be pleasurable. 
For instance, eating olives does. " 

''There's another modification needed," ^aid 
Arthur. "A pleasurable thing too often repeated may 

138 



The Human Nature Club 139 

become disagreeable; for instance, the same kind of 
food or the same walk.*' 

''Are there anymore modifications?" said Mr. Tas- 
ker. ''If there aren't, I'll go on. We form habits of 
acting, and such habits grow stronger and stronger 
with each repetition — that is, certain movements be- 
come surer and surer to be made in certain situations. 
As we saw in our first meetings, this represents the 
formation of closer and closer connections between 
nerve-cells aroused to action by the outside situation 
and nerve-cells whose action brings about the move- 
ments in question. Now, as any series of acts thus 
become habitual, there is less and less need of 
our willing them, attending to them, or even thinking 
about them at all. We may carry them out without 
consciousness — that is, automatically. Thus our wills 
are freed from the care of a big percentage of our 
activities." 

"You could say, too, couldn't you," said Mr. Hen- 
shaw, "that the fact that every decision, every act of 
will, left a permanent effect on a man in the shape 
of so much bias toward some habit, made our deci- 
sions, our acts of will, all the more important. Last 
time we rather tended to belittle the importance of 
our wills, because we became interested in seeing how 
many things we did without willing to do them. But 
many of those acts were acts which at the sta?'t we did 
will. In many cases we did have to attend to them 
and think about them once in order that later they 
might become habits and run off automatically." 

"Yes. Every act or thought, not only those 
resulting from deliberation, but also from chance, 



140 The Human Nature Club 

impulse, imitation or what not, leaves a trace, pre- 
pares the way for others like it. We may forget it, and 
our friends and foes may, but its influence has been 
felt. Dr. Leighton says our brains are affected by every 
activity in them, that their growth depends on the sort 
of work they do, and that they register a man's good 
and bad deeds as faithfully as the recording angel." 

*'To come back to your point, that the growth of 
a lot of fixed habits leaves one's will and attention 
free to attend to other matters," said Miss Fairbanks; 
**you can see how important and helpful that is by 
taking piano-playing as an illustration. At first you 
have to think where to put your fingers for each note, 
but you soon form the habit of hitting the right key 
when you see the note. The sight of the score brings 
the right movement to pass automatically, and you 
are free to attend to combining certain movements so 
as to play chords, etc. The associations between the 
sight of certain combinations of notes and the proper 
movements involved in playing them soon become 
habitual, and you can think of something more 
advanced. After a while the mere playing of ordi- 
nary pieces becomes automatic, and you devote your 
mental efforts to getting improved tone and expres- 
sion, etc. One could never get very far on in music if 
the brain didn't look after a great many things with- 
out help from our thinking powers." 

^'Imagine," said Mrs. Elkin, **what life would be 
like if we had always to think about things the way 
we do at the start — if, for instance, when eating, we 
had to think about our knives and forks the way four- 
year-olds do. There couldn't be much table-talk." 



The Human Nature Club I4I 

"It strikes me,** said Mr. Henshaw, **that forming 
habits is like acquiring capital. A person who always 
has to think out each simple act would be like a man 
who lives from hand to mouth, who never can advance 
his position in life because he has always to think 
about that day*s bread. The man who forms habits, 
on the contrary, is storing up a great deal of useful 
ability; he doesn't have to work all the time for the 
present day*s needs, for he can draw on his capital, 
these habits, to supply many of his wants, and so be 
free to make wide plans and to foresee the future. 
Moreover, just as capital begets capital, so one habit 
serves as a basis for others. Harmful habits might 
be likened to debts, to complete the simile.** 

"Important as habit-forming is at all times, it is 
especially so for young folks,** said Mrs. Ralston. 
"I wish I might have known what I've heard to-night 
when I was fifteen years old. I didn't realize then 
that the habits I was forming would decide what I'd 
be all my life long. Ordinarily, after people are 
twenty-five they don't change their general habits of 
thought and conduct. It*s about as hard as to add 
a cubit to one's stature.** 

The club now engaged in some general conversa- 
tion concerning the moral importance of habits, in 
place of which the editor prefers to insert a quotation 
from Professor James: * 

"The physiological study of mental conditions is 
thus the most powerful ally of hortatory ethics. The 
hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells 
is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in 

*" Principles of Psychology," Vol. 1, p. 127. 



142 The Human Nature Club 

this world by habitually fashioning our characters 
in the wrong way. Could the young but realize how 
soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, 
they would give more heed to their conduct while in 
the plastic state. We are spinning our own fates, 
good or evil, and never to be undone. Every small- 
est stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little 
scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson's 
play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by 
saying, 'I won't count this time!' Well, he may not 
count it, and a kind heaven may not count it; but it 
is being counted none the less. Down among his 
nerve-cells and fibers the molecules are counting it, 
registering and storing it up to be used against him 
when the next temptation comes. Nothing we ever 
do is in strict literalness wiped out. Of course this 
has its good side as well as its bad one. As we become 
permanent drunkards by so many separate drinks, 
so we become saints in the moral, and authorities and 
experts in the practical and scientific spheres, by so 
many separate acts and hours of work. Let no youth 
have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, 
whatever the line of it may be. If he keep faithfully 
busy each hour of the working-day, he may safely 
leave the final result to itself. He can with perfect 
certainty count on waking up some fine morning to 
find himself one of the competent ones of his genera- 
tion in whatever pursuit he may have singled out." 

*'I wonder whether it would be too much to say that 
a man's character is really just the sum total of his 
habits of thought and action?" said Mr. Elkin. "Peo- 



The Human Nature Club I43 

pie are all the time talking about good characters and 
bad characters and so on, and a few weeks ago I put 
into the box the question, 'What really is a person's 
character?' Our talk about habits seems to give at 
least a partial answer.' 

"It seems to me," replied Mr. Henshaw, **that 
when we say any one has such and such a character 
we don't mean that he has any thing in him which cor- 
responds to the word. We really mean to express 
briefly the history of his behavior and to make 
a prophecy concerning his future. If we say, 'John 
Smith has an upright character,' we mean that in 
general his actions have been and will be upright, not 
that there is any extract of uprightness inside of his 
mind. Character means the way that a man has 
reacted and will react to the situations he meets in 
life. Of course his habits denote a lot of particular 
ways of acting, and the sum total of them will be 
a large part of his character." 

'*But mustn't there be so7nething in him to cause 
these actions, something which is the basis of his be- 
havior?" said Miss Clark. 

'^Certainly. The connections formed in his brain 
would be the cause, in this sense, of his behavior, and 
the difference between two men of different characters 
would be that in their brains there were different cell 
connections. I meant that there was no one object or 
thing corresponding to character." 

"Can't we see a little more closely what the basis 
of character is?" said Arthur. "What you say would 
be true of a man's whole nature or make-up, and if 
you mean to refer to that when you use the word 



144 The Human Nature Club 

character, all right. Then our whole study has been 
of the elements of character. Instincts, habits, sense 
powers, etc., all have a share. But suppose that we 
take as our meaning for character the pei^manent gen- 
e7'al tre7id of a man s mind^ as opposed to the occa- 
sional, accidental and inconsistent in his life. That, 
I take it, is what we oft:en do mean. For instance, we 
say that so and so acted contrary to his general char- 
acter, or though he was of a good moral character he 
committed one great crime, or this one act of heroism 
is the bright spot on a cowardly and base character. 
We oppose a man's general character to his particular 
acts. Any one of them may or may not be in accord 
with it. According to Henshaw's account, such talk 
would be bosh, for a man's character, he says, is the 
sum of all his tendencies to action, and so we couldn't 
ever act contrary to our characters. Of course, one 
is at liberty to take any meaning for the word, but 
I'd rather hear you discuss the sort of thing I've 
described." 

*'I'm in favor of that myself, " replied Mr. Hen- 
shaw. ''It will be a more definite topic. I suppose 
a man's habits would still be a part of his character in 
this sense. " 

"Yes; they are among the stable, permanent 
factors that determine his behavior." 

''Another thing would be his general temperament, 
would it not?" said Miss Atwell. "Some people, like 
Mrs. Slocum, are chronically pensive and sentimental, 
though of course on occasions they may become differ- 
ent. Others, like Mr. Ripley, are generally sanguine 
and hopeful, and take things vigorously. Others are 



The Human Nature Club 145 

generally slow and dull and apathetic. Some people's 
minds seem to move quickly, others slowly; some to 
feel things deeply, to take ideas or feelings hard, so 
to speak, others to be little impressed by things. 
I should think that all these differences of tempera- 
ment, of general mental action and general emotional 
tone, were factors in the character of any one." 

*'We mustn't forget a man's stock of ideas and 
conceptions," said Mr. Tasker. **If we leave out of 
account the chance ideas and opinions that vary from 
week to week, and think of the permanent store of 
ideas which a man keeps unchanged through a long 
period of his life, we shall have to agree that they 
help to determine the general aspects of a man's con- 
duct. A man's religious creed, his political opinions, 
his ideas about life and work and money and study 
and friendship and love — in fact, his entire circle of 
thought upon important subjects — all are parts of 
this permanent background of his nature which we 
call his character." 

*'His habits, his emotional temperament, his gen- 
eral mode of mental action, his circle of thoughts — 
that is a pretty fair analysis of a man's character," 
said Mr. Elkin. 

''Yet you've forgotten one important factor, 
I think," said his wife, "the man's ideals. We are 
not only what we have and what we have done, but 
also what we wish to be and do. A man's standards 
of conduct, his aims in life, the intellectual nature 
which he admires, to which he tries to attain, are 
a part of him. You might include these ideals of 
honor, duty, truth and love among his ideas, but at 



146 The Human Nature Club 

least we should remember that they are ideas of 
a special sort, and are of special importance in 
estimating his character. His habits, temperament, 
mode of mental action, permanent conceptions, and 
his ideals — these together are a man's character." 

''Happy the man who has a large store of useful 
habits of thought and action, who is of a cheerful, 
matter-of-fact temperament, whose mind works 
steadily and fast and with a broad field of conscious- 
ness, who is furnished with a large stock of sensible 
opinions and cherishes sane and noble ideals." 

''Avery good speech, Henshaw; but I don't see 
just how one can acquire some of these elements of 
a first-rate character. We've seen what habits are 
due to, how a man's ideas and ideals come, but I'm 
not sure about his temperament and about such gen- 
eral characteristics as quick and slow thinking, 
intense and shallow, broad and narrow fields of con- 
sciousness. " 

*'I don't myself know just what those are due to, 
or how they can be acquired, or how far their acquisi- 
tion is under our control. Does any one?" 

"We'll have to leave those questions open. At 
any rate, we've done a good thing in clearing up 
a vague fact — character — and showing the different 
familiar elements which really compose it. We can 
see now what we mean by character changing. New 
habits, new ideas and ideals, modifications of tem- 
perament and mode of mental action would all change 
character. We can see what v/e mean when we say, 
'His righteous character kept him from giving way to 
a natural impulse to revenge. ' W^e mean, of course, 



The Human Nature Club 147 

that fixed habits of tolerance, ideas of the folly of 
retaliation, and a well-balanced temperament inhibited 
the temporary impulse. We can interpret such words 
as fickle, pig-headed, pliable, etc., when applied to 
character.'* 

"Yes. I think we'd better be satisfied with the 
evening's work, and adjourn." 



CHAPTER XIII 

SUGGESTION 

*'I suppose that our first business to-night will 
naturally be to talk over the exhibition of hypnotism 
which most of us attended and which Mr. Henshaw 
took part in as a subject. What observations about 
the state of hypnosis did you make while you vourself 
were in that state, Mr. Henshaw?" 

'*I don't know. I forgot all that happened during 
the time I was hypnotized as soon as the operator 
woke me. I shouldn't know a thing that I*d said or 
done unless people had told me about it. My only 
observation, therefore, must be that when some peo- 
ple are hypnotized, they lose, on leaving the state of 
hypnosis, all memories of what occurred therein." 

''That isn't true of all people, for Fred Davenport 
told me that he did remember what he had done." 

"Quite so. I probably went into a much deeper 
hypnotic trance than Fred, for I've had experience 
with hypnosis before. When I was a reporter in New 
York years ago I had occasion to be hypnotized 
a number of times. If one goes into only a very light 
hypnotic sleep, he may remember." 

"What do you suppose makes that forgetfulness?" 
asked Miss Atwell. 

"It seems to me that it's something like our for- 
getfulness of our dreams. There aren't any connec- 
tions between our ordinary waking life and either our 

148 



The Human Nature Club 149 

dream experiences or our experiences while hypno- 
tized. The two systems of thought are widely sepa- 
rated, dissociated, and so one doesn't call up the other. 
Experiences of one trance may be called up in another 
trance. I'm rather interested in these exhibitions, 
and I went three nights. My office boy had been 
hypnotized Monday night, and on Tuesday morning 
couldn't tell me a fourth of the things he'd done. 
I asked the operator to hypnotize him Wednesday, 
and tell him to remember what he'd done Monday 
night. He did so, and the boy when hypnotized 
remembered nearly everything. The important thing 
shown by this forgetfulness is that the thoughts and 
acts of deeply entranced subjects are cut off from 
their ordinary mental life, form a separate system." 

**That may all be," said Mr. Elkin; '*but how in the 
world can a sane man like Judge Rodney be induced 
to hug a broomstick, and go around on all fours bark- 
ing, no matter what system he's in?" 

*'I don't suppose," said Arthur, *'that any one can 
say just how he is induced with surety, but it strikes 
me that this dissociation from one's ordinary thoughts 
would give us a clue. In dreams we are dogs, or 
soldiers, or millionaires, and act as such because 
somehow the idea that we are starts up, and the 
ordinary course of ideas which would naturally come 
up and show us the folly of such a notion is not in run- 
ning order. We saw in thinking about the will that 
every idea tended to be believed in and to work itself 
out in action if it wasn't prevented. Ordinarily 
a false idea — e. g.^ that I am Napoleon — is at once 
denied belief or motor effects by other ideas which 



150 The Human Nature Club 

are called up, such as, *But your name is Ralston,' 
'But you live in 1900,' 'But you are five feet eleven,'' 
'But you aren't Napoleon,' etc. But suppose a man's 
brain to be so affected in the hypnotic trance that 
ordinary associates don't come up, that only those 
associated ideas come up at any time which are in 
harmony with the operator's suggestions. Why 
shouldn't he bark when the idea of being a dog is put 
into his head? Why shouldn't he strut and be pom- 
pous when told that he is the emperor of Germany?" 
"But why," said Miss Fairbanks, "does he receive 
such ideas? Why does hypnosis make a man so sug- 
gestible, so ready to take any idea from the oper- 
ator?" 

"I don't know," said Arthur. "Do you, Henshaw?" 
"I don't know that any one does," was the reply. 
"We can simply see that in this half-awake, half- 
asleep condition that we call the hypnotic trance any 
one is an easy victim to suggestion. We can see that 
he does realize the ideas presented by the operator, 
and we can suppose that he does not realize, at least 
not emphatically, the contradictory ideas which in 
a normal condition he would. I should say that the 
essential of the hypnotic condition was suggestibility, 
uncritical acceptance of ideas, but why that is so is 
beyond us. The case is the same with sleep. Why 
should a man, just because he is in the sleeping state, 
believe in all sorts of absurd things, lack his custom- 
ary, criticising ideas? The latter state is so common 
that we don't marvel at it, but if it happened only 
once or twice in a lifetime, we'd doubtless puzzle over 
it, much as we do over hypnotism." 



The Human Nature Club 151 

*'It is wonderful, isn't it/* said Mrs. Elkin, '*to 
what lengths the power of the operator's suggestions 
may go. Do you remember how he made that woman 
drink vinegar by calling it soda-water? She smacked 
her lips over it, too. Her very sensations were modi- 
fied." 

*'Yes," added Miss Fairbanks; **and he could 
abolish sensations as well as modify them. She let 
him stick a needle right through her tongue, and 
apparently didn't feel it at all." 

''Of course you folks know," said Dr. Leighton, 
*'that people have had all sorts of operations per- 
formed upon them while hypnotized. Arms have 
been amputated, teeth extracted, children born, with- 
out the least pain. In fact, the medical profession 
was just taking up hypnotism as a method of anaesthe- 
tizing people when the discoveries of ether and chloro- 
form provided anaesthesia in another way. Hypno- 
tism is still used in certain cases." 

''You shouldn't have kept still and let us show our 
ignorance, Dr. Leighton. Probably you know all 
about hypnotism." 

"I think you've got at all that I could have said, 
and put it in a better way. As you've said, the 
hypnotic trance is first of all a condition of mind in 
which a person is extraordinarily suggestible. Any 
idea or hint given him is accepted. You say, 'You 
are a soldier,' and he marches in time, with shoulders 
back, salutes you, etc. His suggestibility makes him 
in many cases an easy victim of illusions and hallu- 
cinations. He will see a stick as a gun, or hear a 
series of screeches as a fine song, or will feel that he is 



152 The Human Nature Club 

freezing or hungry or is a six-year-old child, all at your 
slightest suggestion. He will be unable to make move- 
ments which you suggest he cannot make, unable to feel 
pains which you suggest do not exist. In the second 
place, the hypnotic state seems, as you've said, to 
represent a system of ideas and behavior split off from 
a man's ordinary mental system. The events that 
take place in it tend to be forgotten, and there is evi- 
dence that the irrationality and subservience to sug- 
gestion are the results of this split-off, dissociated 
condition. There is no inhibition, no restraint, no 
criticism, because the ordinary associations of ideas 
and ordinary habits of action don't come into play." 

'*I've read of a hypnotized person who was able to 
hear a watch tick in the next room when no one else 
could, and of another who would read through the 
back of a book, the operator holding the book open 
and looking at the printed page. The way the sub- 
ject did it was to look at the tiny image of the page in the 
operator's eye} If these cases were true, it would 
show that in the hypnotic trance the senses may 
become extraordinarily acute." 

''They doubtless do, Mr. Tasker. Your case is 
from a reputable book. The same man, it is said, 
could see with the naked eye things which in his ordi- 
nary state he couldn't see at all without a micro- 
scope. " 

''After all, said Mr. Henshaw, "is this extreme sus- 
ceptibility to suggestion such a very peculiar and iso- 
lated fact? Isn't it true that we are all the time doing 
things just from suggestion without ^ny real reason? 

'See James's " Psychology," Vol. 11, p. 609. 



The Human Nature Club 153 

When a political speaker controls, as we say, the 
minds of thousands of men, so that they vote or act 
as he desires, he often doesn't do it by argument or 
reasons, or by influencing their rational opinion, but 
just by persistently and adroitly suggesting certain 
ideas. When a skillful lawyer gets hold of a certain 
sort of witness, we know that he can make him say or 
deny almost anything. He does it, I believe, largely 
by using the force of suggestion. Take a mob of 
men who lynch a man or start a riot. They act from 
suggestion. I talked with one of the men in the mob 
of strikers at Lawrence who burned down the mill. 
He was a thoroughly decent fellow, and I wondered 
how he came to do such a thing, so I asked him. 
'I don't really know,' he said; *I just had to do it. 
The impulse got hold of me, I suppose, because the 
crowd was doing it. I didn't think why or why not, 
or of anything but just of burning that building 
down.' " 

Note. — One of the most emphatic cases of the power of 
suggestion to make a man act contrary to his real nature and 
convictions is given by Dr. Sidis in his book entitled **The 
Psychology of Suggestion " : " While Sokolov was fighting hard 
for his life, I saw a corporal lying on the piazza and crying 
bitterly. On my question, * Why do you cry?* he pointed in 
the direction of the mob and exclaimed, *0h, they do not kill a 
commander, but a father! ' 1 told him that instead of it he 
should rather go to Sokolov's aid. He rose at once and ran 
to the help of his commander. A little later when I came 
with a few soldiers to Sokolov's help, I found the same corporal 
striking Sokolov with a club. * Wretch, what are you doing? 
Have you not told me he was to you like a father? ' To which 
he answered, * It is such a time, your honor; all the people 
strike him; why should I keep quiet?" — page 305. 



154 The Human Nature Club 

**In schools,'* said Miss Atwell, **I*ve often seen 
teachers get answers from their scholars which they 
thought were the result of knowledge or interest, but 
which I could see were really the results of the teach- 
er's own suggestions. For instance, a teacher says, 
*How many children think this poem is very beauti- 
ful?' and all the youngsters raise their hands, though 
they may in reality have been bored to death by it. 
As for the production of hallucinations, I've read of 
this experiment. A man brought to a schoolroom an 
atomizer full of water. He talked to the children 
about spring and violets, and how nicely they smelt, 
and then he went around spraying the water and 
asked the children what they smelt. A big percent- 
age of them smelt violets very strongly, and were sure 
that the atomizer had perfumery in it." 

**I think that often our feelings toward paintings 
and poems and artistic things are really due to sug- 
gestion, not to real reasons. We enjoy and admire 
those things which we expect to enjoy and admire. 
Do you remember the story of John Kendrick Bangs' 
*Idiot,' who told the people at his boarding-house 
that he had written a sonnet, and repeated one of 
Shakspere's to them. They all felt it to be trash, 
and ridiculed him unmercifully. If he'd started out 
by saying, 'You all probably admire that famous sonnet 
by Shakspere,' I dare say he could have repeated 
some perfect bosh and still held them enthralled." 

**It seems perfectly clear that suggestion plays 
a great role outside of the hypnotic state, but I sup- 
pose we'd all agree that in the hypnotic state one's 
susceptibility to suggestion is vastly increased." 



The Human Nature Club 155 

**And the manner of the suggestion is likely to be 
very different in the two cases, isn't it?" said Mr. 
Henshaw. ''If the striker I mentioned had been 
hypnotized, you could have said, 'Light this match; 
put it there,* and he would have obeyed your direct 
command, whereas actually the suggestion came in 
a rather subtle, indirect way. The cries of the mob 
against the owners, the insinuation of the leader that 
it would be a good thing if their old mill was de- 
stroyed, etc., gave the suggestion in a masked form. 
So with your children. Your man couldn't have 
come in, said nothing but 'Smell this; it's violet per- 
fume,' and succeeded in producing the hallucination. 
He could have if the youngsters had been hypnotized. 
As it was, he had to mask his suggestion, make it 
indirectly. So with your sonnet. The Idiot couldn't 
have said, 'This poem is bad; you will detest it,' as 
one could to a hypnotized person. He made the sug- 
gestion that they would ridicule it by attributing it to 
himself. Suggestions to normal people seem to work 
best when they are masked or made indirectly, while 
they work with hypnotized people no matter how 
direct and barefaced they may be." 

"I think," said Mr. Elkin, "that a man I used to 
work for had at least a practical knowledge of that 
fact. He wouldn't say, 'Do this,' or, 'You must get 
this done before dinner,' but he'd say, 'When you get 
those boxes all arranged, you come to me, say about 
eleven o'clock'; or, 'I'd like to have you do some 
copying for me after you get those boxes all nicely 
arranged. Come about eleven.' He would not com- 
mand, but would suggest, would take it for granted 



156 The Human Nature Club 

that I'd do that arranging as fast as I could, and the 
result used to be that I'd work like a beast at the 
job, whatever it was, because I didn't think of doing 
otherwise. If he'd ordered me to get the work done 
by eleven, I probably would have expected it to take 
a longer time, and wouldn't have worked so fast." 

*'I can assure you that suggestion, as you call it, is 
a necessary method with children," said Mrs. Ralston. 
''We all know that if you say to a child, *Now I'm 
going away, and you must not go out of the yard; 
don't go near the brook, of all things,* you'll be 
likely when you come back to find the youngster all 
wet from paddling in that very brook. Your command 
acted as a suggestion to the very thing you wished 
to avoid. I remember, too, how well an indirect sug- 
gestion once worked with a five-year-old boy in a Sun- 
day-school class. He was behaving very badly, and 
I made him sit beside me, where I was keeping him 
fairly quiet. To show off, he said: 'If I had a whip, 
I'd lick you ; I'd lick you all to pieces. You're a fool, ' 
and all such things. I said to the other children, 
'Isn't it too bad that Harry isn't big enough to sit up 
by himself and keep still?' Immediately he spoke up: 
'I guess I can sit still as well as anybody,' and he took 
his own seat, and was as quiet as a mouse for fifteen 
minutes. An ounce of suggestion is often worth 
a pound of commands or reproofs." 

"We can suggest to ourselves, too," said Miss 
Fairbanks. "If I feel that I'm going to play well, if 
I say to myself, 'You have that piece well in hand; 
you'll do better to-night than ever before ; you needn't 
have any fears about this concert,' I will do well. If, 



The Human Nature Club 157 

on the contrary, some train of thought gets me to 
thinking about possible mistakes and failures, I'm 
likely to make them. Self-confidence might be called 
self-suggestion of success, I should think." 

'*It's interesting to see," said Mr. Tasker, ''how 
an odd, abnormal aspect of human nature like the 
hypnotic trance leads us, when we study it, to a lot 
of information about everyday life. We've seen that 
it is directly due to the tendency of all ideas to com- 
mand one's belief, and to result in appropriate move- 
ments unless they are counteracted by other ideas and 
habits. We've found suggestion to be at the bottom 
of many of the facts of mob nature, school life, home 
education, the witness-stand, literary appreciation, 
and self-confidence. I have a notion that suggestion 
may also account for two observations which Miss 
Clark put in the box weeks ago. Won't you read 
them to us, Miss Clark?" 

Miss Clark read: "'I once went to see a 'healer' 
who had attracted large crowds. He had evidently 
made an impression on the public, for over a hundred 
people, some paralytic, some with goitres, some lame, 
were there. He was a very imposing man in appear- 
ance, and in the half hour's speech with which the 
performance began, his rich voice and confident man- 
ner almost made one believe what he said, though it 
was perfect trash. Finally he let twenty sick people 
come on the platform. He had been doing this each 
day for two weeks, so he couldn't have hired them to 
be confederates. It would have cost too much. 

*' *One case was very striking. A man had come 
up whose right hand was all contracted and bent. He 



158 The Human Nature Club 

said he hadn't been able to open it for years. The 
healer said he would cure that all right. He rubbed 
the hand a moment or so, in the meantime talking 
soothingly about nerves and vital force and so on, and 
telling the man that he was getting his hand back to 
health. **Now," he said, '*it's all right. The circula- 
tion is restored. Open it out so," and he took hold 
of the man's fingers and straightened his hand. 
'*Open it yourself. Shut it. Open it. There you are, 
sir. That hand is as good as ever." The astonished 
man walked from the platform down the aisle of the 
hall, looking: neither to the right nor to the left, but 
holding his eyes fixed on that hand which he held up 
and alternately opened and shut.' 

**I won't read all of the other observation. It 
simply narrates one of the few Christian Science cures 
I've come across. It was a case of rheumatism." 

"Well," said Mr. Henshaw, **if suggestion can 
make a needle in the tongue painless, or raise a blister, 
or make one's muscles all rigid so that one lies for 
twenty minutes with one's head on one chair and 
heels on another, I don't see why it may not be the 
explanation of the occasional successes of these Chris- 
tian Scientists, mental healers, and crank doctors of 
all species. What do you think. Dr. Leighton?" 

"I think suggestion/^ at the bottom of such cures," 
was the reply. **No matter whether the crank doctor 
talks of the spiritual nature of the universe, or the 
vibrations from the sun, or the supremacy of the mind, 
or the value of faith, or the virtues of his roots and 
herbs, or vital force, or magnetism, no matter whether 



The Human Nature Club ^ 159 

he gives you religious advice, or a tin can with a string 
tied to it, or a magic belt, or a rabbit's foot, or a mes- 
sage from the spirits, if he has any effect on you, it is 
probably by suggestion, by inoculating you with the 
idea that you are or will be well. The more intel- 
ligent men in the medical profession now grant that 
mere mental suggestion, in or out of the hypnotic 
trance, can often help to cure people of some afflic- 
tions, especially nervous troubles and what we call 
hysterical or mock diseases — where, for instance, the 
patient may be unable to see, though his eyes are all 
right, unable to move his arms, though his muscles 
and nerves are all sound. And it is even likely that 
it may be efficacious over a wider field than we now 
think. Of course, suggestion can't do everything. 
Cancer, Bright's disease, abscesses, tumors, yellow 
fever, the bubonic plague, and such like, need the 
doctor's drugs or the surgeon's knife. The cranks 
abuse it. And probably it is much more efficacious 
with some types of mind than with others. Still, it's 
a good thing to have on your side. And a magnetic, 
hopeful physician, who inspires confidence, will be 
likely to cure more people than one of the opposite 
type. We all know that. To make it the sole means 
of curing disease, however, is simply murder. If you 
care to hear accounts of some authentic cases where 
reputable physicians have by suggestion effected cures 
comparable to the supposed successes of the quacks, 
I'll run over to my office and get Bernheim's *Sug- 
gestive Therapeutics.' " 

While Dr. Leighton was gone, a number of stories 



l6o The Human Nature Club 

were told of cures and failures to cure by different 
sorts of quacks. He soon returned, and read the 
following accounts of some of Bernheim's cases: 

^''''Observation XXVIII. — Aphonia in a nervous 
woman^ dating back eight days. — Immediate cure by hyp- 
notic suggestion. 

'' * Madame O., who is fifty-five years old, is gen- 
erally well. She says that every winter she has 
hoarseness^ which lasts six weeks. At the present 
time,- January 23, 1887, she has had severe hoarseness 
for eight days, without any cough or expectoration; 
she has an enlarged gland over the right ear and pain 
on the right side of the neck 

" *I hypnotize her; in a few seconds she is in som- 
nambulism [a deep trance]. I suggest the total dis- 
appearance of the aphonia; I make her talk in a loud 
voice In a few minutes I wake her. To her great 
astonishment her voice has come back. She has remained 
cured of her aphonia. 

'' ^Observation L. — Trouble in writing, consecutive to 
chorea — Cure in a single seance of hypnotic suggestion. * * ' 

Dr. Leighton showed in the book copies of the 
boy's writing before and after suggestion had been 
used. The copies were about like these. The cure 
was permanent. 





^^^^^^t^'z^ 



The Human Nature Club i6i 

*' ^Observation LXXXIV. — Arthralgia consecutive to 
an arthritis. — Iminediate cure by suggestion. 

** 'D., twenty-one years old, comes to consult me 
on April 2, 1884. Three months ago, after having 
wheeled a wheelbarrow, he developed a swelling of 
the left heel, and was unable to bend the joint. Six 
weeks ago a physician applied a starched bandage, 
keeping it on three weeks and two days. The band- 
age was taken off fifteen days ago, and there was no 
improvement. 

** 'D. limps and bends his knee when he walks. 
He cannot bend the left heel, which is painful to pres- 
sure. The swelling has disappeared. On the 2d 
I hypnotized him. Profound sleep; memory perfect 
upon waking. Suggestion and passive movement of 
the joint during sleep. 

*' *Upon waking, he bends the tibio-tarsal articula- 
tion very well and spontaneously without pain. He 
walks well, .... the cure has been maintained.* 

*' For the last one,'* said Dr. Leighton, ''I'll read 
you a case something like Miss Clark's man at the 
healer's. 

' ' ' Observation LXXX. — Rheumatic paralysis of the 
forearm and right hand. .... Total cure in four sit- 
tings. ' 

(In the first two sittings the patient regained abil- 
ity to straighten his wrist, to lift his hand, and to 
feel heat, cold, touches, etc., on its surface. Now 
follows Dr. Bernheim's account of the influence of the 
last two sittings.) 

*' 'Dr. Levy sent the patient to my clinic on June 
30 The middle^ fourth^ and little fingers are 



1 62 The Human Nature Club 

bent into the palm of the ha?td at an a?igle of one hundred 

and twenty degrees After two hypnotic 

stdinces^ tht ^diXXtnt opens his hand easily The 

cure is complete.' " 

'^Before we go, Doctor," said Arthur, **what book 
would you recommend on this subject?" 

*'On the whole, I should say that ^Hypnotism,' by 
Albert Moll, would be the best. The chapter on 
hypnotism in Volume II of James's 'Principles of 
Psychology' would be a good chapter to read with it." 



CHAPTER XIV 

IMITATION 

''I find among the observations," said Miss Fair- 
banks, at the beginning of the meeting, ''a number of 
statements pointing to imitativeness as a common 
feature of human nature. Mr. Tasker mentions 
a spring during the time he was at college when four 
men out of every six in the college wore corduroy 
trousers, for no special reason that could be discov- 
ered. Miss Atwell has some comments on the way 
styles in women's dress are taken up. Mr. Henshaw 
has noted that one war play, like * Shenandoah, ' seems 
to bring forth a number of successors. The fad for 
pictorial and inscribed buttons is a recent case that 
I have noticed. Most of our styles and fads are not 
due to real desires, but to a human tendency to fol- 
low a leader, to do the thing done. If the club has 
no objection, I'd like to have you talk over imitation 
as it is found among men and women." 

''The topic seems to me very timely," said Mr. 
Tasker; ''for, after all, isn't most of this imitation 
really suggestion over again? When a person sets the 
example to others and is followed, what does he do 
but inoculate them with the idea of doing or being 
that thing? The example spreads in the way it does 
because the suggestion is masked. If a college boy 
bought a pair of corduroy trousers, and then went 
around saying to every one, 'You want to get some 

163 



164 The Human Nature Club 

of these; they're fine; get a pair; please get a pair,' 
the chances are that he wouldn't be imitated; but as 
things are, the suggestion is insidious, and the strik- 
ing idea of that novel apparel comes to possess the 
minds of the whole college. Imitation of the sort 
displayed in those observations seems to me to be 
just suggestion. " 

*'I suppose we'd all agree," said Arthur, '*that 
there was no mysterious force, imiiation^ which com- 
pelled people to act as they do in these cases. Of 
course, the effect is produced by people being 'inocu- 
lated with ideas,' to use the phrase we seem to have 
adopted. But I don't think we ought to stop with 
labeling the facts suggestion. How does the sugges- 
tion work? Why do we imitate some people and not 
others? How do these fads, etc., start? Can you 
tell beforehand what will and what won't be imitated?" 

''Your second question interests me," said Miss 
Atwell. ''I used to think that we imitated solely the 
people we admired, looked up to, but I'm not so sure 
of it now. I think that we tend to imitate everything^ 
because we tend to act out all the ideas we get. And 
I'm sure we often imitate people whom we don't look 
up to at all. For instance, I found myself catching 
the mannerisms of a teacher whose methods I hold in 
very low esteem." 

''There is, however, a great deal of evidence in 
favor of your old opinion, isn't there?" said Mrs. 
Elkin. "Servants ape their masters' dress and ways; 
courtiers mimic their king. After all, we look up 
rather than down to find our models." 

"Might it not be this way," said Mr. Henshaw. 



The Human Nature Club 165 

"Suppose we accept what Miss Atwell says about the 
general tendency to do what we see done, to follow 
any one who goes, to become what any one is. There 
would then be a tendency to imitate most what we 
attended to most, and that would be likely to be the 
acts of those we admired. Also there would be a 
tendency on our part to inhibit imitation in the case 
of people beneath us morally or socially. We 
would feel, 'But I am not to be like that person.' In 
the case of those whom we feel to be above us, on 
the other hand, our natural imitativeness would be 
reinforced by a conscious effort to emulate. So, 
though when off our guard we might imitate anybody, 
as Miss Atwell says, the preponderance would be 
decidedly toward imitating our betters — that is, those 
we think of as our betters." 

**It strikes me,*' said Arthur, *'that we often 
adopt ideas not because we find them in our betters, 
but because their source is mysterious, unknown. If 
a woman knew the Hebrew manufacturer who invents 
some new style of hat, she'd never buy and wear 
that style of hat. But when the hat appears in the 
store window as a new style, her very ignorance of 
its origin renders imitation likely. I think that in 
many cases the fact that the suggestion comes from 
nowhere, that we don't know any reason why we 
should do a thing, that there is no sense in it, no 
model to esteem or disdain, favors imitation." 

''That may be," said Mr. Tasker. "At all events, 
in most things we are imitators, following blindly the 
lead of some known model or some mysterious ten- 
dency. We like to be like other people, that is one 



1 66 The Human Nature Club 

reason. Besides, most of us can't indulge in the 
luxury of inventing or thinking out styles and man- 
ners and opinions, etc., for ourselves. We take them 
ready-made, and save time." 

^'Somebody has to invent these things, though; 
somebody has to be the leader," said Mrs. Ralston. 

'*Each one* of us is, I suppose, a little of both. In 
some things we lead, in others follow; but some peo- 
ple are leaders to a much greater extent than others. 
Plenshaw is the leader, the inventor, the suggester, 
for the Republican party in this town; the rest of us 
are in politics his followers, imitators, suggestible 
subjects. We rehash his editorials in our conversa- 
tion, originating perhaps some modifications of our 
own. " 

*'And I," said Mr. Henshaw, 'Margely repeat the 
ideas of the big editors and statesmen, inventing here 
and there an idea, perhaps once a year. The real 
originators are few and far between. Luckily, their 
inventions, though hard to originate, are easy to copy. 
Progress would be inconceivably slow if we had to 
wait for each individual to invent every reform or new 
idea or new method for himself. It's well for us that 
inventions, new ideas, are like the plague or smallpox; 
they can spread by infection." 

"You might add," said Mr. Elkin, ''that as in the 
case of infectious diseases, some people have great 
power of resisting the germs." 

''We have been gradually broadening our use of 
the word imitation until we've brought it to mean the 
source of all our acquisitions save those resulting from 
accident or absolutely original invention," said Miss 



The Human Nature Club 167 

Atwell. "We mustn't forget that we are not talking 
about exactly the same process as we were when we 
started. It's interesting, however, to see that you 
can express the entire process of civilization by two 
facts, invention and imitation." 

*'It maybe interesting," said Arthur, "but I think 
it's too vague to be profitable. It's easy enough to 
say that everything in people must be either the result 
of their own mental activities or the repetition of 
other people's, and it's easy to call the former inven- 
tion and the latter imitation, but what of it? What 
good does such talk do if we don't see in concrete 
detail how this imitation occurs? When you start to 
make sweeping statements about the world at large, 
and to tack names to processes you don't understand, 
I feel like calling the club to order." 

"We accept your rebuke, Arthur," replied Mr. 
Tasker; "and I'll leave our flight into speculation 
about civilization and return to definite facts by 
reporting an observation of mine to the effect that 
whereas the object of girls' imitation is generally 
distinguished for good looks, the boy who is imitated 
by other boys rarely is. In other respects the imi- 
tation of girls differs from that among boys." 

"Oh, Mr. Henshawl" cried Miss Clark; "that 
reminds me that you've never told us your opinions 
about the human nature of women, how their minds 
differ from men's, and that sort of thing. Won't you 
now?" 

"I think I'd better not interrupt our investigation 
of imitation." 

"I wouldn't mind that, Henshaw, " said Mr, 



1 68 The Human Nature Club 

Tasker. **I think human imitation is too complex 
a matter for us to see far into. We've noted its 
common occurrence, the sort of person imitated, and 
have all doubtless thought of the added importance 
given to our conduct by the fact that it is a germ that 
spreads to other people. I don't think we need dwell 
on the topic longer." 

''Well," said Mr. Henshaw, "first of all, women 
seem to me to be decidedly different from men in 
their mental abilities. They are naturally less in- 
dependent and aggressive, more docile and obedi- 
ent." 

"I don't believe they are naturally so," said Mrs. 
Elkin. ''I think it's all due to their training. The 
little girl is not left to her own devices so much; she 
is taught to pay more regard to conventional opinion. 
It is not thought to be nice if she shows independence 
of spirit or mind. Originality isn't fostered in her as 
it is in the boy. People say women never reason, but 
when that's the case it's because they haven't been 
given the chance to. It doesn't pay for them to. 
They would be reasonable if people wanted them to 
be. The trouble is that all people expect of a girl is 
that she shall be agreeable." 

The discussion of the mental differences between 
men and women became very lively, and the editor 
finds more rash statements and warmth of argument 
than real observations of human nature. Mr. Hen- 
shaw had little chance to report his opinions, and 
what he did say seemed to be only opinion, not ob- 
served fact. Indeed, at the end of the discussion 
Arthur wisely reniarked that the club had gone beyond 



The Human Nature Club 169 

their depth in trying to handle such vague questions 
as imitation or the psychology of the sexes. 

Before adjournment, Mr. Henshaw asked the club 
to be ready at the next meeting to present facts about 
mental training, general development of mental ability. 



CHAPTER XV 

MENTAL TRAINING 

**I announced last time that I wanted to have the 
club think over the question of how people can 
improve their intellectual powers, how they can train 
their minds. Arthur has been experimenting with 
the matter in a modest way, and later we'll hear from 
him. From our study so far *the mind' seems to be 
just a name for the fact that we have thoughts and 
feelings, and what *the mind' can do seems to be just 
to have certain particular thoughts on the proper 
occasions. The quality of a person's mind seems to 
depend on the particular ideas it has. We've found 
that there was no 'power of memory,' but really thou- 
sands of memories; that there was no 'power of atten- 
tion,' but only superior clearness and prominence of 
certain thoughts; that 'reason' was just a name for 
the fact that certain ideas were dwelt on and others 
inhibited. What do all you school-teachers mean, 
Tasker, when you talk about training discrimination, 
training memory, cultivating the power of reason, etc.? 

"I suppose some of them do mean that there are 
some mysterious forces, or mental dynamos, each of 
which does some one kind of thing, remember, or 
reason, or what not, and that education somehow gets 
these wonderful engines going and keeps their wheels 
greased. I remember once hearing a man at a teach- 
ers' institute compare the mind to a big machine. 

J 70 



The Human Nature Club 17 1 

'Sensations are thrown into the hopper at one end,' he 
said, 'attention makes them clear and intense, per- 
ception, imagination and memory in turn work them 
over. They are changed into general notions by the 
action of conception, and are then subjected to the 
influence of- the reason, which turns out the finished 
product.' Of course, that sort of a view is all bosh.'' 

"But I don't see the impossibility of training apart 
from learning particular things. What we mean by 
greater mental power, by greater power of discrimina- 
tion, for instance, is that all discriminative acts are 
more delicate. What we mean by saying that one 
person has more reasoning power than another, is 
that his reasonings in all sorts of lines will be more 
successful. If you don't like the word 'power,' take 
the words 'general ability.' If a person's general 
ability is improved, it seems to me fair to say that 
you've trained his mind." 

''May I put Henshaw's question in another way? 
Let's ask, 'Does special training give general ability?' 
As Henshaw says, our nervous systems seem to be 
schemes for associating particular acts with particular 
situations, particular ideas with other ideas. We can 
see how studying arithmetic makes a boy able to 
reason with numbers, for the study has given him the 
system of particular associations needed. Henshaw's 
point, I take it, is that there's no reason why those 
particular associations should make him any better 
able to reason about religious creeds.. Training in 
arithm.etic surely gives special ability, but does it give 
general ability? Wouldn't you, to be trained to really 
general reasoning, have to reason about all sorts of 



172 The Human Nature Club 

things? That's really your problem, isn't it, Hen- 
shaw?'* 

"Yes. It seems to me that learning one thing 
makes you able to do that thing, but doesn't add to 
any general mental capacity." 

*'But if that were so, how could people vary so 
much in their abilities to handle novel problems in 
life? Some people surely do have better judgment 
than others in all sorts of matters for which they've 
received no special preparation. Surely, Mr. Tasker 
could do better, say on a North Pole expedition, or 
in a Chinese meeting, than Mike Malloy, who shovels 
off our walks. If we look back on our training at 
school and outside, we can see clearly that besides 
learning how to meet a lot of particular situations, 
we've become better fitted to handle all sorts of 
unfamiliar ones." 

'*I might claim, Miss Atwell," retorted Henshaw, 
"that our inherited capacities had something to do 
with such differences in people. We may have been 
born with a better general equipment than Mike. 
Look at the other side of the matter a bit. We 
learned that by training, by practice, some people 
improved vastly their delicacy in discriminating pitch, 
or the tastes of teas, or the colors of ribbons. But 
do you imagine that the musician who has had 
this training can discriminate the flavors of soups any 
better than average people, or that our tea-taster has 
any finer eye for color, or that the girl at the ribbon 
counter has, by her training, improved her ability to 
judge the lengths of lines? Take another case. Play- 
ing chess undoubtedly requires a lot of intellectual 



The Human Nature Club 173 

ability, but are the famous chess-players notorious for 
ability to think out any other life problems than those 
of chess? Tending a machine requires a lot of atten- 
tion. A man running a complex machine often has 
to watch with the utmost care, but is he thereby 
enabled to attend to sermons or books or to a game 
of cards any better? Take a proof-reader. He exer- 
cises himself in observing small details hours every day 
for years, but he isn't any more proficient in observing 
plants or animals or human nature than before. Why, 
just take ourselves as cases. We've improved in 
observing and explaining people's actions about two 
hundred per cent, but is there any one here who 
observes the coming of the birds, or the condition of 
the weather, or the dust on the mantelpiece, any bet- 
ter than before? 

**This is a good place to work in my experiment, 
I guess. Henshaw and I were talking about this 
after the meeting two weeks ago, and I thought of 
a scheme. I took twenty big cards and made on 
each a line. Those lines were from six to twelve 
inches long, and varied by half inches. I had mother 
and the Elkins and Arthur look at them, one at 
a time, and judge their length. Then I made another 
set of thirty cards with a line on each, but in this set 
the lines were j^, f^, ^, ^, i, i^, i^, i^, and 1% 
inches long. I then had the folks judge these, and 
record their judgments. I then had them do it over 
and over again, looking after each trial, so that they 
could learn to do it better. They improved tre- 
mendously, made, in fact, after a day or so, only 
about one-third as many mistakes as they did at first. 



174 The Human Nature Club 

I then had them try the six to twelve inch lines again, 
and they did not judge them a bit better than at first. 
This is, of course, only a little thing, and wouldn't be 
anything to found a general opinion on; but so far as 
it goes it shows that training in one special field 
needn't improve us except in that special field." 

'Til agree," said Mr. Tasker, ''that there isn't 
any subtle, mysterious training of Uhe attention' or 
Uhe memory' or ^the reason,' for I don't thinly there 
are any such things to be trained, and I'll allow that 
your facts clearly show that special training need 
not give general ability. But still I don't see how 
you explain Miss Atwell's facts that a man who has 
learned to do a number of things accurately, thor- 
oughly, and reasonably, will generally do unfamiliar 
things better, too." 

*'Would you claim that learning one thing didn't 
help us to know other different things at all^ Mr. 
Henshaw, or only that there never was this mysteri- 
ous general 'mental training' we hear talk about?" 

"I meant only the latter," Mrs. Elkin; "but I'd 
like to see just how the special training could improve 
general ability before I believed it did in any case. 
I for my part will agree that we all have powers over 
a wider field than that in which we've actually devel- 
oped them. I'll agree, for example, that having to 
bring up coal when you are a boy makes you more 
likely to be able to stand work in all sorts of lines. 
I'll agree that denying yourself cigars helps give 
a general power of self-denial. I should think any 
one who had pupils or children would want to know 
just how such general influence came about, as gen- 



The Human Nature Club 175 

eral habits and powers seem more important in a way 
than particular accomplishments or information." 

'*I can see one way," said Mr. Elkin, *'if you'll 
permit me to join this debate. There are sovciq par- 
ticular accomplishments which have general value. 
Bringing up coal, for instance, teaches a boy, first of 
all, that tasks which are unpleasant can be done, that 
disagreeable matters can be undergone. Now I take 
it that that is one of the most generally valuable bits 
of experience a boy can have; it may be a big part 
of the difference between a spoiled child and a decent 
citizen. Again, making a boy obey may teach him 
the particular but yet widely applicable truth that his 
own wishes are not the measure of the universe. So 
with industry. The habit of working ten hours a day 
may be acquired in connection with some special 
work — studying, farming, carpentering, or what not; 
but it is of general influence, for the habit is not 'If 
carpentering, carpenter ten hours a day,' but 'If 
working, work ten hours a day.' To use an Irish 
bull, 'Some special training is general.' " 

"That's good; and I can follow it up by another 
shot. A man told me once that high-school geom- 
etry had been great training for him, for it taught 
him that things could be absolutely proved. Now his 
reasoning in geometry may have improved his reason- 
ings about all sorts of things later, by giving him the 
idea that you can do more than guess at or follow 
opinions about any question; you can in many cases 
absolutely settle it. That idea may have been called 
up in all sorts of circumstances, and may have made 
him try to really demonstrate that a thing was so, 



176 The Human Nature Club 

whereas if he had not studied the geometry, he might 
never have even tried." 

*'That might be the case with observation, too. 
A boy in school might from a course in botany or 
natural history get (what, perhaps, he never had be- 
fore) the notion that you can find out things by sys- 
tematically and carefully watching. He might get 
this idea in connection with the study of a frog or 
bean-stalk, but then apply it to business or politics 
or the stock market. We saw in studying attention 
how ability to stand the strain of effort was of great 
general importance. So, from the particular habits 
and powers that, as Elkin says, are general, and from 
the generally applicable ideas which special training 
may inculcate, we should expect some general influ- 
ence. Yet this doesn't require any subtle mental 
machinery, but only the ordinary mental laws that 
we've been working with." 

"I have a theory," said Miss Atwell, '*that fits 
pretty well here. I'm rather proud of it, and you 
must listen to it. It has always seemed to me that 
the world is, after all, not so very big. We don't 
really meet so very many new things. For what we 
call new things are often just new mixtures of old 
familiar elements. We don't do so very many new 
things, either. What we think of as a totally new 
action is often just a new combination of old familiar 
movements. For instance, this figure which I draw, 
we'd call new. We've never seen it before; yet it's 
elements are none of them new. So with my act in 
drawing it. It would be called new, yet the separate 
acts of which it was composed were all familiar to me. 



The Human Nature Club 



177 



Now, this view gives still another opportunity for 
special training to seem to give general ability. We 
learn in some sort of special training a number of 
things and find that we then do better a lot of novel 
things. But they may be only apparently novel. 
Their elements may be the same as the elements of 
the first set of things. Special mental training may 




Fig. 12. 



give general mental ability, then, in some cases, be- 
cause the elements of the knowledge, the elements of 
the movements — the elements, that is, of the ability — 
were really the same in the general field." 

''Let me give one more way," said Mr. Tasker. 
"The world is not only not so big as it seems, per- 
haps; it is also not so varied; very many things are 
much alike. Even where the elements of seemingly 
different things are not exactly the same, they may 
be near enough alike so that the treatment which 



178 The Human Nature Club 

succeeds with one may succeed with another. For 
instance, practice in speaking before a class may make 
you better able to preach or argue in court.'* 

"All that you folks have said I'll grant to be prob- 
able and to often occur, and I believe, as you do, that 
thus thinking or doing a thing not only teaches us 
that, but also fits us for other things to the limited 
extent you've claimed. But I think you ought to 
admit that we have no right to presuppose such wide- 
spread influence of special training until we have evi- 
dence that it exists. My experience is that every 
habit or power or bit of knowledge is often confined 
within a very narrow sphere of activity. People may 
be charitable in the church and niggardly in support 
of public institutions, observant of bugs and oblivious 
to human nature, reasonable about business and pig- 
headed in politics and religion, careful in speech and 
careless in dress, and so on through a list of a thou- 
sand things. " 

"I'm sure I'll agree to that, and I hope next yeaf 
we can, under Arthur's guidance, test this question 
by making experiments to see just how far certain 
training improves our general powers," replied Mr. 
Tasker. "It certainly is foolish to talk about 'the 
faculty of observation,' or to suppose that because 
a man has learned to be accurate in one thing he will 
be in all others. I think that we ought all to recall 
what Henshaw said some weeks ago about each one 
of us being not so much 'a mind' as a multitude of 
*mental systems.' I may be careful while in my 
'school-teacher' system, and careless in my 'home 
life' system. I may be reasonable in my 'student of 



The Human Nature Club 179 

physics' system, and utterly bigoted in my 'theology' 
system. I may have the innocence of the dove in my 
*evening-party' system, and be as wise as a serpent 
in my 'business* system. The training of my mind in 
one of its systems need not pass over to any of the 
rest.'' 

*'Don't you think, too," said Mrs. Ralston, *'that 
this ought to give us a good deal of charity toward 
people when they seem to us to be pretty mean and 
bad? We may see only one of their systems, and in 
others they may average up as well as most people. 
I don't think you ought to judge any one till you know 
the whole of him, all his systems^ as Mr. Henshaw and 
you call them. " 

*'I think," said Arthur, **that if all of us together 
should start in to know completely the human nature 
of just one single man, we'd be kept busy for all our 
lives, and at the end find lots in the man that we 
hadn't touched." 

''I think," said Miss Clark, *'that we must go 
home early to-night, and leave you to finish by your- 
selves. Good night, Mrs. Ralston, good night." 

NOTES BY THE EDITOR. 

The importance of this discussion for those interested in 
education either in the school or in the home is evident. There 
is a popular belief that attending to, or observing, or reasoning 
about one sort of things makes one attentive to, or observant 
of, or reasonable about all sorts. On the contrary, the mind 
appears to really represent a number of particular abilities, 
particular acts, particular memories. It appears to be an organ 
for connecting particular ideas and particular movements 
with particular situations. The club noticed that these parti- 



i8o The Human Nature Club 

cular, special abilities might give general ability in so far as 
they (i) were really accomplishments of general utility, or (2) 
inculcated ideas which might arise in all sorts of situations and 
influence our behavior, or (3) taught us to deal with certain 
ele?7iejtts which were present in all sorts of different complex 
situations, or (4) enabled us to deal with closely similar things. 
Further than this the club wisely decided we should not ex- 
pect any general influence from anything we learn ttnless we 
see evide7ic3 of it. There is no useful reference for reading 
about this topic, but it would be an excellent plan to train one's 
self in some one thing and test one's self before and after train- 
ing to see if one's general ability in any line had been im- 
proved. If one were learning to play the violin, for instance, he 
could find out whether his fingers were more nimble and accu- 
rate in writing on a typewriter after some months* of violin 
exercises than before. If one were learning to play golf, he 
could see whether his eye and hand were more skilled in 
throwing stones or playing croquet after a month's golf practice 
than before. 



CHAPTER XVI 

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 

Mr. Tasker opened the meeting of the club by say- 
ing: "We are fortunate to-night in having with us Dr. 
Leighton, whom you all know, and Superintendent 
Carmody of the county reformatory. Dr. Leighton 
has kindly consented to tell us about the ways in which 
the mental make-up of parents influences that of their 
children. Superintendent Carmody will speak to us 
about the human nature of criminals. Dr. Leighton, 
you have the floor." 

"Ladies and Gentlemen: What our intellects and 
characters are you have found to depend on what our 
nervous organization is. Like it, then, they are 
determined partly by what is in us from the beginning 
of life, and partly by what happens to us. Every 
human being grows from an ovum or egg. This egg 
contains substances in a certain arrangement, which 
determine in part what the man or woman who de- 
velops from it will be, what bones, nerve-cells, etc., 
he will have; what things he can do without learning, 
how much mental vigor he will possess, etc. This egg 
r':;presents his inheritance from his immediate and 
remote ancestors. Let us use the word germ-inherit- 
ance for this. 

"Now the egg or germ is affected by all sorts of 
influences in its months of life before it develops into 
the new-born baby. It is alive from the start, is 

i8i 



[82 The Human Nature Club 

growing, is influenced by heat and cold, lack of food, 
by poisons which it gets from the mother's blood, and 
by all sorts of events that happen to it. The growing 
brain is, of course, as much modified by these influ- 
ences as is any other part of the body. It is evident 
that what happens to us before birth may make a big 
difference in our future intelligence and character. 
If, for instance, our nerve-cells are poisoned by 
alcohol before birth, we shall suffer just as surely as 
if we after birth become willful drunkards. 

'*From birth on, things are constantly happening 
to us, and we are constantly reacting in various ways. 
We can all see that what we eat and drink, what we 
see and hear, whom we imitate, what we do and neg- 
lect, all make a difference in our mental make-up. 

''What one of us is mentally thus depends (i) on 
his germ-inheritance, what he was at the start; (2) 
on what happened to his growing brain before birth, 
and (3) on what happened to it after birth. We doc- 
tors use the word 'nutrition' to mean all the influences 
covered by 2 and 3. It includes the influence of foods 
and poisons, accidents and shocks, habits and lessons 
learned, people and things seen, ideals and ambitions 
inculcated, etc. 

Scientists in general reserve the word heredity to 
refer to only what a human being possesses at the 
very start. Of course, you could use it as most peo- 
ple do, to mean what tendencies are in a person at 
birth. If we do, we must be sure to remember that 
the word then covers real inheritance, and also some- 
thing quite different — namely, the acquisitions gained 
before birth. These are tremendously importarv 



The Human Nature Club i8^ 

To save any misunderstanding, I will use the phrases 
germ-inheritance ^ ante-birth acquisitions^ and post-birth 
acquisitions^ or nurture^ to refer to these three factors 
at work in developing a human being. 

''Let us first ask, 'Which of these three is the most 
important?' One finds all sorts of opinions about 
this question. Liebnitz, who was a famous philos- 
opher of the seventeenth century, thought that nurture 
was all important; that if he could control the educa- 
tion of the world's inhabitants he could remodel mun- 
dane affairs, and banish ignorance and vice. 

"On the other hand, Mr. Francis Galton, the most 
thorough student of this problem in human nature, 
says: 'There is no escape from the conclusion that 
nature [by which he means germ-inheritance plus 
ante-birth acquisitions] prevails enormously over nur- 
ture when the differences in nurture do not exceed 
what is commonly to be found among persons of the 
same rank of society and in the same country.'^ 

"If you look at the matter on all sides, I suppose 
you'd have to say that the germ-inheritance was the 
most important. That decides whether one will have 
the mind of a jelly-fish or a dog or a man. It gives 
a basis without which the other influences could effect 
nothing. The differences between races, between 
a negro and an Englishman, between a Filipino and 
a German, are in great measure due to different 
germ-inheritances. A man's germinal inheritance is, 
so to speak, his capital, his stock in trade. He may 
foster or spoil it by good ante-birth acquisitions; his 
nurture may increase or waste it. But without it he 

'" Inquiries into Human Faculty," page 241. 



184 The Human Nature Club 

couldn't do business at all, and its nature must decide 
what sort of business he will do. 

'*It is probable that general mental ability as well 
as special mental gifts are in large measure due to 
germ-inheritance. Mr. Galton has studied this ques- 
tion more thoroughly than any one else, and he de- 
cides that in the case of eminent mental gifts he has 
demonstrated that the son of an eminent man has one 
thousand times as good a chance of being eminent as 
the son of the average man. The brother of an emi- 
nent man has over five hundred times the chance of 
being eminent that the brother of the ordinary man 
has. A grandson of an eminent man has about one 
hundred and forty times as good a chance; a nephew 
about one hundred times as good a chance. Training 
and family influences could not account for this, or 
even probably for any considerable part of it. 

^'Eminent mental ability, then, and presumably 
mental ability in general, is mainly the result of germ- 
inheritance, not of nurture or education, so far as we 
can at present see. 

''We must remember that he does not mean that 
the son of a genius will be a genius, or that the son 
of a clodhopper need not become one of the great 
ones of the earth. What he means is that there is 
a very much greater probability for the former event 
than there is for the latter. We must not expect any- 
thing like absolute likeness between father and son, 
for the son's germ-inheritance is a tremendously com- 
plex affair, depending on both sides, subject to ail 
sorts of accidental influences. 

''I dare say you've often wondered why th§ same 



The Human Nature Club 1815 

father and mother may have children differing so 
widely in physical and mental make-up. Such cases 
show clearly the complexity of the matter. Of course, 
their ante-birth acquisitions may differ, but besides 
that there are probably differences in the general 
vigor and developing power of germs from the same 
parents, but at different times. In pigeons the time 
of the year makes such differences. Birds which in 
April hatch strong, healthy offspring may, other con- 
ditions remaining just the same, have in September 
weak, ill-developing young. Finally, let me remind 
you again that the germ has a great number of pos- 
sibilities, and the realization of any one of them may 
be caused or blocked by very slight accidental occur- 
rences. The germ may contain elements which have 
not openly manifested themselves for several genera- 
tions, but which still are transmitted from parents to 
children, and which may at any time appear. A boy 
may thus develop some mental characteristic exactly 
like his great-grandfather, though that characteristic 
hasn't been present in his grandfather or father. 

"So much for germ-inheritance of mental charac- 
teristics. We now come to the ante-birth acquisi- 
tions. The germ depends for its development on the 
treatment it receives before birth as well as on its 
inherent nature; especially important is the food sup- 
ply. Of course, the influence is now indirect, is only 
through the food supply in the mother's blood, or 
through physical conditions of heat, cold, shock, etc. 
How far these influences can make differences in the 
character and intelligence of the future child, I can- 
not *^11 you. They would certainly seem capable of 



1 86 The Human Nature Club 

making differences in his general bodily and nervous, 
and so mental vigor. Of course, physical diseases 
thus transmitted may indirectly work tremendous 
changes in the child's mental make-up. 

**It's not my business to discuss the influence on 
development of what happens to children after birth. 
But I want to correct a possible misapprehension. 
When I said that germ-inheritance was perhaps the 
most important because the most fundamental, I did 
not mean that the most important special character- 
istics of human nature were due to germ-inheritance. 
Truth-telling, diligence, attentiveness, integrity, 
unselfishness, charity and their like, are all probably 
characteristics acquired after birth. Speaking 
broadly, civilization^ including morality, is in each 
human being an acquisition, not an inherited trait. 

''The great question of all concerning the influence 
of heredity on the development of human nature is, 
I think, this: 'Are the habits and powers and inter- 
ests and ideals we acquire in life transmitted to our 
children? Are the characters we form and the intel- 
lectual abilities we attain handed over, in whole or .-^ 
part, to our offspring? Do we carve out not only our 
own destiny, but also that of our children?* Our own 
inheritance x'^i passed on, but are our acquisitions as well? 

"It is certain that in a rough way the sins of the 
fathers burden their posterity, and on the other hand 
that the good we do lives after us in the character of 
our children. 

"But you will recognize from what I have already 
said that many causes may be accountable for this. 
Intelligent parents may have intelligent children, be- 



The Human Nature ClulT 187 

tanse their own acquired intelligence leads them to 
train them intelligently, because they themselves serve 
as models for inheritance, because the 'nurture' of 
their children is such as to develop intelligence. 
Again, there may be substances in the blood which are 
acquired by and in turn minister to the healthy, vigor- 
ous action and growth of the brain, and the 'ante- 
birth acquisitions' of children of intelligent parents 
may thus account for more or less of the mental abil- 
ity these children show in after life. Finally, there 
might be real changes in the germs of parents caused 
by thoughtful, intelligent lives, and thus the acquired 
intelligence of the parents might make a favorable 
difference in the germ-inheritance of their children. 

''Taking a simple illustration, we may say that 
a mother who has learned to control fits of melancholy 
and depression might decrease the tendency to such 
attacks in her children — first, because her own 
acquired control over them would cause the surround- 
ings of the child after birth to be favorable ; secondly, 
because she had decreased some substance in her 
blood which caused them, and so improved the devel- 
opment of the child before birth; thirdly, because 
she had by her training actually changed the nature 
of the germs which represent the child's germ-inherit- 
ance. 

"Now, there can, of course, be no doubt of the 
first sort of influence. We see evidence of it all around 
us. And there can be no doubt that so far as there 
are any substances in the blood that affect mental life, 
such might vary in the child as they varied in the 
mother. Certain diseases undoubtedly are trans- 



1 88 The Human Nature Club 

mitted in this way. But about this kind of transmis- 
sion of mental powers I know nothing definite enough 
to tell you. When we come to the third question, 
whether mental habits and powers acquired in life so 
alter the germ substance of the parents that their 
children will profit by the parents' 'acquisitions, ' we 
find that our present knowledge points to the 
answer 'no.' 

''I can't begin to give you all the arguments pro 
and con, all the evidence which makes students of the 
processes of life nowadays decide that a man's germ- 
inheritance, the make-up of the minute mass of living 
matter which is his starting-point in life, is independ- 
ent of the acquired nature of his parents. You can 
see for yourselves that our acquisitions are not wholly 
transmitted. Ten generations may have acquired 
the power to read, yet the children of the eleventh 
have to learn. A child's ancestors for ten generations 
may have spoken English, yet he doesn't have the 
power or tendency, and will speak French if brought 
up by French people. I have said that nowadays we 
believe that our acquisitions have no direct influence 
at all on our children's germ-inheritance. The evi- 
dence for this belief is like that I've just given for the 
belief that they are not wholly transmissible. It is, 
namely, that we see no signs of such transmission. 
For instance, human beings, ever since there were 
any, have seen the sun, yet a person born blind does 
not have a mental image of the sun, does not know 
that the sun exists until he has been taught. Again, 
people have learned in every generation that fire hurts, 
have learned to keep their hands out of it; yet chil- 



The Human Nature Club 189 

dren tend when they see a bright flame to reach for it. 
Why, then, should we expect that because a father 
learns to keep his hands off other people's property, 
his children should be any less greedy? 

**So at present it seems wise to believe that so far 
as definite particulars go, what a man does in life 
makes no difference to the germs from which his chil- 
dren will grow. Of course, generally good or poor 
nutrition of all the parent's body would mean good 
or poor nutrition of these germs, and that might mean 
healthy or unhealthy development of mind as well as 
body in the child. But facts about such general 
influence are very vague. The practical outcome of 
this is that a man's becoming a doctor or lawyer or 
thief or Indian chief need not prove that his son will 
inherit qualities that will fit him better than his parent 
for a like career; that having a college education 
need not make your children inherit any more gifted 
minds than you did. The gifts that are in our power 
to bestow on our children are, first of all, proper edu- 
cation after birth; secondly, proper nutrition before 
birth, and (possibly) thirdly, some of the general 
physical and mental vigor which we may have 
acquired." 

*'I'm sure," said Mr. Tasker, '*that we all are 
obliged to Dr. Leighton for clearing up a matter about 
which most of us had very vague and mistaken notions. 
After the meeting is over we can ask questions and 
make comments about it. I take great pleasure in 
introducing to you Superintendent Carmody. " 

*'Ladies and Gentlemen: Concerning the mental 
characteristics of criminals a great deal has been 



190 The Human Nature Club 

said, though but little is known. Some students of 
the matter would tell you that the criminal is a men- 
tally undeveloped being, an immature man, a being 
whose growth in intellect and character has gone only 
part way. Others would tell you that the criminal 
was a distinct species of humanity, clearly marked off 
from ordinary folks, and that he transmitted his 
make-up to his children. Others would tell you that 
there was nothing whatever extraordinary about the 
general mental make-up of criminals, that the reason 
for their crimes was vicious and careless training in 
growth, and that to talk about inherited criminality 
was as absurd as to talk about inherited knowledge of 
solid geometry. 

"Inasmuch as Dr. Leighton has already given you 
a statement of the general facts and problems of 
mental inheritance, I may well begin by discussing 
the question just hinted at — namely, 'Is the tendency 
to crimes a matter of germ-inheritance, or is it a post- 
birth acquisition? Are criminals born or made?' In con- 
nection with this question we may run across a number 
of the noteworthy facts about criminal human nature. 

*'First of all, let us disabuse our minds of the 
notion that there is any such thing as the cri??tinal^ with 
a perfectly distinct type of make-up. To be a crim- 
inal means to behave in a way which the opinion of 
people in general condemns and stamps as unsatis- 
factory and menacing to human welfare, and so pun- 
ishes. Now, a man may behave in such ways in a fit 
of passion, or under remarkable temptation, or in 
boyish pranks, though his general character tends 
entirely to the opposite sort of life. Here we have 



The Human Nature Club 191 

a criminal who clearly has not a criminal make-up. 
A good, pious woman is afflicted with a morbid 
impulse to strangle. She detests the thought and 
fights against it, but it is overpowering, and she has to 
give way to it. She kills in this frightful manner 
her sister's child. But for expert medical testimony 
she would be punished as a criminal. She has com- 
mitted a criminal act, though not with criminal intent 
or from a wicked nature. So with those kleptomani- 
acs who are really mentally diseased. Again, we 
have criminals where the cause of the act was a brutal 
nature, others where it was lack of distinct ideas 
about right and wrong, others where it was laziness, 
others where it was a perverted desire to show off 
before a gang of vicious roughs. A multitude of dif- 
ferent mental characteristics may thus lead people to 
criminal acts and criminal careers. It is therefore 
evident that if one takes the thousands of criminals, 
and asks any question about them, the answer which 
fits some may not fit others. So with our question 
concerning the inheritance of criminality. The traits 
which lead a man into crime may in some cases be 
inherited and in others acquired. 

"We can, however, look at the general run of crim- 
inals, and in a vague, general way see whether 
criminal ancestry or vicious training plays the leading 
role. When doing so we should remember that crim- 
inal parents are likely to give their children a training 
such as would probably predispose the best born 
children to vicious and lawless lives. So when we see 
crime running in families we must not jump at the 
conclusion that germ-inheritance is to blame. 



igl The Human Nature Club 

**Now, let us take a look at a famous family of 
criminals. The infamous Juke family of seven hun- 
dred and nine individuals, distributed over six gener- 
ations, produced seventy-seven offenders in one 
county in forty-five years. If the records from the 
previous years and from three other counties, and all 
the records of misdemeanors, could have been added, 
the number would doubtless be much increased. The 
history of this family is a disgusting record of de- 
bauchery, vice, pauperism and crime. ^ It would 
seem at the first look that we had here a case of inher- 
ited criminality. If we look more closely, we find 
that the training received by the members of the 
family, their post-birth acquisitions, may account for 
their rich harvest of criminals. 'They lived in log 
or stone houses, similar to slave-hovels, all ages, 
sexes, relations, and strangers 'bunking' indiscrim- 
inately Domesticity is impossible 

They .... were so despised by the reputable com- 
munity that their family name /tad come to he icsed 
ge7ierically as a term of reproach. ' The young Juke 
was thus early familiarized with vice and crime; he 
was deprived of intercourse with decent children; he 
had no examples of thrift or industry or honesty 
or chastity; he was without moral restraint or social 
discipline. 

''That his criminal career was the result of what 
happened to him after birth rather than of his mental 
inheritance is suggested by several cases where early 
marriage and removal from the community was fol- 
lowed by a decent career. For example, a Juke girl 

^See " The Jukes," R. L. Dugdale. 



The Human Nature Club 193 

who had a thoroughly vicious ancestry and had been 
arrested for vagrancy in her fifteenth year, 'marries 
a German, a cement-burner, a steady, industrious, 
plodding man, settles down into a home, .... and 
takes the position of a reputable woman. ' 

*'That ante-birth acquisitions may have played 
a part by making the health and physique and mental 
development of the Juke children such as would unfit 
them for regular lives and self-control, and make them 
easy victims of impulse and appetite, is shown by the 
large percentage of disease and poverty and the gen- 
eral lack of hygiene and personal care. The Juke 
progeny may have been burdened with a germ-inherit- 
ance that would make them likely candidates for crim- 
inal careers; they probably were mentally enfeebled 
by bad nutrition before birth; they certainly were 
brought up in an environment which would favor the 
acquisition of immoral and criminal habits. 

**We may now turn from this particular family, and 
look at juvenile offenders in general. One would 
suppose that if criminals passed on mental charac- 
teristics which act as causes to crime, the class of 
youthful criminals would include a large number of 
descendants of criminals. Yet only two per cent of 
the inmates of English industrial schools^ were found 
to be descendants of habitual criminals. In fact, the 
juvenile offender seems to be the product of bad 
bringing up, rather than of special criminal ancestry. 
Twenty per cent of the inmates of industrial schools 
are without a father living, fourteen per cent without 

^The figures here quoted are taken from W. D. Morrison's "Juvenile 
Ofienders." 



194 The Human Nature Club 

a mother living. In the cases of children with both 
parents living, there is still emphatic evidence that 
proper restraint and proper moral training are rare. 
Over three-fourths of the homes from which these 
children come are, to use Mr. Morrison's words, not 
'morally fit for a child to live in.' AVhen children of 
this very same class are taken and well cared for, 
they do not become criminals to any greater extent 
than average children. So we are warranted in the 
opinion that criminality in this class is in the main 
not an inborn, but an acquired trait. Their bad train- 
ing accounts for their offenses, and if good training 
is supplied, the offenses do not appear. However, 
though these children do not inherit criminality from 
their parents, they may, and probably have, inherited 
more than the ordinary human being's share of mental 
dullness and incapacity. 

'*In the study of criminals one thus finds in con- 
crete shape all the problems concerning heredity of 
which Dr. Leighton told you. How much of the 
criminal's career is due to germ-inheritance, how 
much to ante-birth acquisitions, how much to post- 
birth acquisitions? Answers to these questions are 
being gradually worked out by students of crime. Do 
not forget that these factors account for the nature of 
every man as well as of criminals, and that it will be 
one of the greatest problems of the future to ascer- 
tain in the cases of men of all sorts the exact influence 
of heredity and of environment. In the case of crim- 
inals in general, I personally am inclined to the opin- 
ion that no specific tendencies to crime are inherited. 
Certain general mental conditions may be inherited 



The Human Nature Club 195 

which serve as good soil for criminal tendencies to 
grow in. But the training is the real decisive factor. 
Other people, however, are of the contrary opinion. 
We don't know enough yet. 

*'So much for the question of hereditary crimi- 
nality. I have a few remarks to make upon some of 
the mental characteristics of the average criminals. 
Remember, that in many cases these won't fit. First 
of all, they are, as one would suppose, without moral 
ideals, feelings of remorse, or much sensibility to any 
moral emotions. They are below the average in gen- 
eral intellectual powers, though, of course, they may 
be apt in their particular lines. . They are likely to 
be incapable of sustained effort, and to be irritable 
and impulsive. They are distinctly religious. *Out 
of twenty-eight thousand three hundred and fifty-one 
admissions to three large metropolitan prisons,' 
remarks the Rev. J. W. Horsley, only fifty-seven 
described themselves as atheists, and this number,' 
he adds, 'must be further reduced as containing some 
Chinese and Mohammedans.' Many of these cases 
were men who were really rather religious.^ 

"On the whole, the criminal population is not very 
markedly different from the average. They are not 
different from other men and women as dogs are dif- 
ferent from cats. If I had here a hundred criminals 
and a hundred average men and women, I am not at 
all sure that any psychologist could, by a mental 
examination, pick out the criminals from the rest. 
Yet as one lives among them and reads widely in the 
history of crime he gains a feeling of certain types of 

*For these and similar facts see "The Criminal," by Havelock Ellis, 



196 The Human Nature Club 

human nature — the criminal types. I'm not sure, 
again, that these types are any more distinct than 
types of plumbers or lawyers or scientists. If you'll 
come and visit our reformatory some time, you can 
yourselves judge what the human nature of criminals 
is like by actual observation. And finally, though 
I've just done the opposite thing, I advise you to study 
the psychology of criminals rather than talk about it,'* 



CHAPTER XVII 

A REVIEW 

At this meeting of the club, its members discussed 
the following questions and observations, taken from 
their box. They were able, with the aid of the 
information they had already acquired, to answer the 
questions satisfactorily, and to refer the observations 
to similar facts already studied. The editor trusts 
that his readers can do likewise, and feels confident 
that they will prefer to think the explanations out for 
themselves rather than to be told. 

"A man who had seen long military service became 
a waiter in a restaurant. One day a gentleman din- 
ing there was telling an anecdote in a rather loud 
voice, and in the course of it said, 'Company, salute!' 
The waiter, who was passing by with a tray of dishes, 
dropped the tray, and brought his hand up to his fore- 
head in the act of saluting." 

''A famous French tragedian used to hire a man 
whom he would beat and pummel as fiercely as pos- 
sible just before going on the stage to play the last 
act of Othello. Why did he do it?" 

''Samuel Johnston used to insist on touching every 
lamp-post as he walked along the street." 

"Why is it that a person can be extremely accurate 
in one sort of thing — e. g., keeping accounts — and yet 
be very inaccurate in other things?'* 

"I walked down Liberty Street every day for two 

X97 



198 The Human Nature Club 

weeks, and didn't know that a new house was being 
built there." 

''Some years ago a certain company used to wrap 
the small packages of tobacco which they sold in 
papers with pictures of baseball players on them. 
On these papers it said, 'Save the wrappers. ' (A prize 
was given for every hundred returned.) The small boys 
of the town would collect these papers, and seeing the 
inscription, would save those which had batsmen on them, ' ' 

"There were, I believe, five Poe brothers at Prince- 
ton, all of whom played on the Varsity football team. 
They varied only a few inches in height and a few 
pounds in weight, and played the same kind of a game. 
All were of light weight." 

"A clergyman started in to preach, and could hardly 
restrain himself from groaning aloud, so violent was 
the pain he was enduring from an ulcerated tooth. 
After a few minutes he felt no pain at all, though it 
returned when he had finished his sermon." 

"What is the basis for this advice, which I read 
in a book on education: 'To assume the existence of 
vice [in a child] is often to produce it. We must, 
therefore, say to the child: "You did not really wish 
to do that; but see how others would interpret your 
action if they did not know you." ' " 

"An Indian visited a camp, and became interested 
in some of the pictures he saw there. He carefully 
followed with the point of his knife the outlines of 
a drawing in a magazine. When asked why he did 
so, he said that doing so would help him to carve 
a likeness of it when he returned home. What sort of 
imagery was strong in his case?" 



The Human Nature Club 199 

*'E. W. Sabel, in the Saturday Evening Post^ tells 
an anecdote of Frederick Villiers, the famous war cor- 
respondent. Villiers had been under fire for some 
days, the enemy bombarding the force to which the 
artist was attached, so that the arrival of a shell was 
a commonplace circumstance to be treated in the 
usual way. Out of this ordeal he came unscathed to 
London, and was strolling down the crowded Strand. 

''On a sudden the pedestrians were appalled to see 
him fling himself at full length upon the greasy, 
muddy pavement, and there lie on his face rigid as 
a dead man. From all directions men rushed to 
render him assistance. They turned him over to rub 
his hands and unbutton his collar, expecting to find 
him in a fit. But no. On his face they found not the 
pain and pallor of epilepsy, 'but astonishment and 
mud. Villiers, when they laid hold of him, quickly 
jumped to his feet, shook the mud from his hands and 
clothes, and then looked around for an explanation 
of his own apparently idiotic act. The explantion 
was forthcoming. 

''A few yards behind him stood a horse and cart. 
The carter had a moment after Villiers passed pulled 
the pin and allowed the cart-box to dump upon the 
ground a load of gravel. The heavy beams of the 
cart, of course, struck the wood paving with a resound- 
ing *dull thud,* and the clean gravel hissed out with 
an evil roar. This combination of sounds, the war 
artist declared, was identical with the striking of 
a live shell, and Villiers, forgetting that he then stood 
some thousands of miles from the seat of war, flung 
himself down to await the dreadful explosion.** 



CHAPTER XVIII 

SOME DEEPER QUESTIONS ABOUT HUMAN NATURE 

**I've made a collection of questions from our ob- 
servation-box which I thought might all be taken up 
together. I classed them together, not because they 
were about the same matters, but because I hadn't 
any notion of their true answers, and didn't see just 
how they could be answered, but perhaps you can do 
better than I. Here they are: 

"No. I. If our feelings of outside things are due 
to action in our different senses, so that our knowl- 
edge is limited by our sense-powers, so that, in fact, 
there may be things in the world by which we aren't 
influenced at all; if, also, there may be differences 
in things which we don't feel; if, also, we feel as 
sounds what are really vibrations of the particles of 
the air, as colors what are really only different rates 
of vibration of the ether — how can we be said to know 
the reality of the world at all? We don't seem to get 
it all, or to get all the differences in it, or even to get 
it as it is. Don't we have just a sham world, and 
may not the reality of things be entirely different? 

*'No. 2. What, really, is a 'thing?' Our sensations 
of things vary. Sugar tastes different after vinegar; 
it looks different at night; its weight would be differ- 
ent on the moon. What is its reality? What stays 
the same, no matter how much our feelings of it vary? 

*'No. 3. If willing means just the fact that some 

200 



The Human Nature Club 20i 

ideas are attended to, are clear and emphatic and 
possess the mind, if our actions are the result of the 
ideas that we harbor, what do we mean by saying that 
our wills are free? Are they free? Do we really do 
anything in the universe on our own account; are we 
really in the game, or does it all run off like a ma- 
chine? Do we make a difference, or don't we? 

*'No 4. Is the feeling that we could have done 
otherwise, which we have after an act or a choice, 
just a delusion? Is the action of our nerve-cells in 
such cases really decided, as the course of a bullet is, 
or do our own selves have an influence, play a part? 

**No, 5. If our thoughts and feelings go with cer- 
tain cell commotions in the nervous system, how can 
we expect to have any existence after our bodies have 
returned to dust again? Or if we can, what sort of 
an existence can it be? 

*'Nos, I and 2 are really the same question in dif- 
ferent words, you see. So also with 3 and 4. 

"I asked Mr. Northrup to come in to-night because 
a clergyman is supposed to know more about the last 
three questions than common people. Won't you 
answer them for us, Mr. Northrup?" 

'*I won't answer them, because I can't. I could 
give you on questions 3 and 4 the arguments the- 
ologians give, but as there are arguments both ways, 
and very good and wise people have been on both 
sides, I suppose that won't help. And question 
5 can't, so far as I see, be answered. If you accept 
the New Testament as a piece of true history, you 
have evidence for continuance of mental life apart 
from the body. But our present-day experience 



202 The Human Nature Club 

doesn't give evidence such as I understand you've 
sought in your other studies of human nature. 

**I would, however, like to say a word before you 
begin to talk over these questions. Your study of 
human nature has led you up to three of life's great- 
est problems, the problems of knowledge, freedom 
and immortality. We get a view of the world which 
enables us to get along in it, but what is it really? 
Our reasons for believing in the existence of other 
people's minds are our experiences of their physical 
actions. What becomes of their minds when their 
physical actions cease? We make movements, do 
things in the world, but so do trees and worms. Do 
we really contribute anything to the universe? These 
are sweeping questions, which have absorbed the 
thoughts of philosophers for hundreds of years. 
I don't honestly believe you or I could answer 
them." 

"It won't do us any harm to think about them for 
awhile, I guess," said Arthur. '*If they can't be 
answered satisfactorily, we can pick the most prob- 
able answer, or find out how they might be answered, 
or decide which answer, if both are equally likely, it's 
best for us to make, or perhaps find that it's our duty 
not to make any answer, or that it's best, after you've 
thought things out as well as you can, to drop the 
whole question." 

*'I was to blame for that second question," said 
Mr. Tasker; "and as I've been thinking about it and 
reading a book my old chum recommended, maybe 
I'd better say what I can. I've come to think that 
the reality of things is really an inner life of thought 



The Human Nature Club 203 

and feeling something like our own. I'll tell you why. 
What do you know me as? Your knowledge of me 
is of a moving thing with brown hair and blue eyes, 
from whom certain sounds emerge, who is so heavy, 
and so hard to the touch, who would taste so and so 
if you were cannibals and ate me. I to you am 
a 'thing' known by sensations. If you didn't see me 
or hear me or touch me, etc., you wouldn't believe that 
I existed. But what do I know myself as? I to 
myself am a lot of thoughts and feelings, an inner life 
of desire, ambition, effort, etc. I am, whether you 
see or hear me or not. Now, here you have a 'thing' 
which is known in two ways. To an onlooker, to an 
outside observer, it is the six-foot biped I described, 
but it really is a living soul, a personal consciousness. 
So I say that the rest of the 'thing' world, the trees, 
stones, worms, etc., are in reality inner conscious- 
nesses. To itself an inner life of feeling is an inner 
life of feeling. In any one else it only causes sensa- 
tions of sight, touch, taste, etc." 

"Well, I was to blame for the first question, which 
is substantially the same as the second, and I think 
your answer is just mystical rubbish," said Arthur. 
"Certainly a human being does have an inner being, 
his stream of feelings, and an appearance to other 
people, his living body. But that doesn't prove that 
the inner being is the reality, corresponding to the 
outer appearance. That might correspond to his arm 
or eyebrow or to nothing, and the rest of the 'thing' 
his body, or all of it, might have a reality of its own. 
Moreover, there might be a different law for sticks 
from that for complex things like the human body. 



!204 The Human Nature Club 

That a consciousness reality went with one wouldn't 
prove that it went with another. 

''I think we just dont know any 'reality' for the 
world of things, or rather I would say that they have 
all sorts of realities, because I would say that the ways 
they impressed us were their realities. They are 'all 
things to all men.' They are what they seem because 
the)' really aren't, but only seem. Don't laugh. 
I mean it. I mean that sugar really is sweet one time 
and not sweet another, white in one light and gray in 
another, etc., because I claim that all that phrases 
like is^ is really^ is in reality can mean, is feels to us.'' 

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking 
about," said Mrs. Elkin. "Let's go on to the next 
question. You men can fight this out later." 

"Perhaps I ought to own up to that third question, 
as to whether we really ourselves initiate any action, 
whether we really choose between two possible 
acts, or really are just like clocks wound up by some 
outside power," said Mr. Elkin. "That is a question 
in theology that always interested me, and I confess 
I believe with the old-time Calvinists that an all-wise 
being could prophesy everything that any one of us 
will do. I don't see that our actions can be otherwise 
than the result of our inherited nature and the circum- 
stances which influence us. We are just little wheels 
in the big universe machine, which turn according to 
the way the whole machine works." 

"Well, I wrote question 4, and I've come to just 
the opposite opinion" said Mr. Henshaw. "We cer- 
tainly feel, after any act, that we could have done 
otherwise." 



The Human Nature Club lo^ 

'*But there's no guarantee that that feeling repre- 
sents the true state of the case. The hypnotized per- 
son, who is the mere tool of the hypnotizer, some- 
times feels that he is doing what he pleases of his 
own free will. In dreams we feel that things are 
real, but that doesn't make them so." 

'*I wasn't going to argue from that. I was just 
going on to say that if that feeling is a delusion, if 
we are really just puppets, moved back and forth by 
some outside power, then responsibility, merit and 
blame can have no real meaning. If the man who 
murders his mother does it just because that's a 
part of the universe-play in which he's a puppet- 
actor, he can't really be blamed for it. He is acting 
in just the same way as the hero who saves a life; only 
he happens to have a different part in the play. If 
we are to be responsible for our conduct, we must have 
real control over it. I confess that my experience 
with people leads me often to doubt whether they are 
really free agents, directors of their own conduct. 
In dealing with people we do act on the supposition 
that their choices will be made in accordance with 
circumstances. We don't expect a man to act freely. 
We expect his nature and training and the induce- 
ments we offer to decide his choice. Still, Elkin, 
I have faith that this world is a moral world, where 
people really are responsible for their actions, and so 
I have faith that their wills are free. Life would be 
just a sham battle if we didn't count, if we weren't 
real contributors for good or evil to the world's his- 
tory. We do make a difference and are responsible 



2o6 The Human Nature Club 

for the differences we make, or else there's no good- 
ness or badness.'* 

'*When you put it in that way I don't feel like con- 
tradicting you, but how can we be real contributors? 
To say that a man does a thing from free choice 
seems to me to mean just that he does it by chance, 
for no reason at all, but we've seen that the ideas he 
has, the habits he's formed, the motives that are pres- 
ent, decide his agtion." 

** You've got around to where the philosophers 
are," said Mr. Northrup. *'It seems as if our acts 
were foreordained as a part of the world-machine, 
but we also all have faith that there is real merit and 
real blame — /. ^., real responsibility — and so we have 
faith that our acts are not all foreordained, but are 
really due to our own selves." 

''I don't believe Mr. Elkin really believes a word 
he says," remarked Miss Clark. ''People only deny 
the freedom of the will when they want to excuse 
themselves from some bad action. It's only people 
who are bad that claim that we are ' creatures of cir- 
cumstance, that drunkenness is a disease, that theft 
is due to temptation, etc." 

''My dear young lady," retorted Mr. Northrup, 
"I know that the view you've just taken is a common 
one, but I assure you it's totally false and wicked. 
One of the best men I ever knew told me that in 
looking over for^^^y years of his life he didn't see how 
a bit of it could have been otherwise. He said he 
couldn't claim praise for any of the good parts, and 
didn't really see that he could have avoided the bad 
parts. Any theoretic view may be put to a bad use. 



The Human Nature Club 207 

Some folks believe in heaven just because they want 
to loaf forever. It is no discredit at all to a man if 
it seems to him that his life is determined for him by 
the constitution of the universe." 

*'It seems to me," said Arthur, ''that real belief 
in either of these theories needn't have much to do 
with saying 'Yes, yes' or 'Nay, nay' to them. Real 
belief is, I think, a tendency to act as if a thing were 
so. If we believe that a team is in front of us, we try 
to get out of the way of it; if we believe that a man 
is a liar, we don't trust him; if we believe that the 
moon is inhabited, we'll focus telescopes upon it, and 
so on and on. Now, just saying a thing is so may be 
compatible with real disbelief of the sort I've described. 
I should say that the important question was whether 
a man acted as if he were really responsible, acted as 
if he really could contribute to the good or bad^in the 
world, and that it mattered not so much what he said 
or wrote about it. Of course, his theories might 
somewhat influence this more important active belief. 

'*My interest in this question is not to try to settle 
it, but to notice that people are split into two great 
classes, on the basis of their active attitude toward 
this question. Some people feel responsibility, feel 
the importance of life, feel that every one of their 
moral choices will make a difference to them and to 
the world, and constantly act as if they did count, as 
if they were themselves making the world what it is to 
be. Another class are swayed by outside influences, 
follow the style, take what comes, accept, as they 
say, the inevitable. They are always committing 
their careers into some one else's hands. They act 



2o8 The Human Nature Club 

as if they coiildiit count, as if they had no part to 
play, save passive non-resistance. They may say, 
*Oh, certainly, I believe in the freedom of the will,' 
but they are the real disbelievers. 

'*The same thing holds concerning the last ques- 
tion, the question of the immortality of the mind after 
the death of the body. There are some people who, 
whatever they say with their lips, act as if this life 
was all. They may talk about immortality, but the 
'beer and skittles,* the applause and comforts of this 
mundane sphere, make up the situation to which they 
react. Other people, some of whom may not be sure 
that human natures can exist apart from human 
bodies, yet live as if they were probationers for 
a larger life, as if in the world as a whole honor and 
duty and truth and love did count more than they 
seem to here. Each man chooses the aspects of the 
universe to which he will react, and these choose to 
react to the nobler and larger life. The practical 
question is not, 'What do you say the world is?* but, 
'What kind of a world is your conduct, your active 
belief, adapted to?* ** 

The company were silent for several moments after 
Arthur had finished. Finally Miss Atwell spoke. 

"Yet we ought to know all we can about these 
things, ought we not? Thomas Arnold says some- 
where: 'Concerning whatsoever matters it is our duty 
to act, concerning those matters it is also our duty 
to think. * I should suppose that our theoretical opin- 
ions would influence what you call our active belief." 

"They will, of course. I just wanted to show that 
the latter was really the more vital fact." 



The Human Nature Club 209 

'*I asked that question about immortality," Miss 
Atwell went on. ''You don't think it irreverent, Mr. 
Northrup?" 

''Certainly not. It's a question that the most rever- 
ent men have again and again asked. Even if we are 
sure that we shall have continued existence, we want 
to know how it is possible." 

"I was once taught," said Mr. Tasker, "that my 
sensations and memories and imagery and feelings of 
activity and emotions depended on the nervous sys- 
tem, yet my 'reason' did not, and that it would exist 
after the death of the body, though sensations and 
emotions, etc., would be gone. That might be true, 
though I don't believe it is; but I can't see that that 
sort of immortality would be of any use. You 
couldn't remember anything, you wouldn't know your 
own name, or have any facts to reason about, or love, 
or feel duty. You would just be a bare 'reason,' 
which would be no better than nothing. Everybody 
would be alike. Unless we have a real personal exist- 
ence continuous with this one, I don't see what differ- 
ence it makes whether we have any." 

"I'm glad you spoke of that, Tasker," replied Mr. 
Henshaw, "because I happened to read a while ago 
a book by an eminent psychologist, who believes that 
real complete personal, existence can continue after 
death. We often talk as if when one of us died 
a sort of superfine angelic being was born in the other 
world. But unless that being is myself, unless it 
remembers my acts and thoughts, what value is its 
existence to me, or what justice is there in rewarding 
or punishing it for my deeds? Now, this psychol- 



210 The Human Nature Club 

ogist — who, by the way, believes that our thougnts 
and feelings do parallel and go with commotions in 
nerve-cells — says that this need in no way imply that 
our thoughts and feelings cannot go on just the same 
or better without them. For, he says, the nerve-cells 
might be just the means of transmitting these thoughts 
and feelings, which might exist apart, but as light 
penetrates through transparent substances, so might 
they appear in connection with these human brains of 
ours. I think I can quote you one passage from 
memory. 

'' 'Suppose .... that the whole universe of 
material things — the furniture of earth and choir of 
heaven — should turn out to be a mere surface veil 
of phenomena, hiding and keeping back the world of 

genuine realities Admit now that our brains 

are .... thin and half-transparent places in the 
veil. What will happen? Why, as the white radiance 
comes through the dome with all sorts of staining and 
distortion imprinted on it by the glass, ..... the 
life of souls as it is in its fullness will break through 

our several brains into this world And when 

finally a brain stops acting altogether, .... the 
sphere of being that supplied the consciousness would 
still be intact; and in that more real world .... the 
consciouness might, in ways unknown to us, continue 
still.'"' 

''What do you think of that, Mr. Northrup?" 
"That's very ingenious, and of one thing I'm con- 
fident. The universe is very big, and may hold facts 
in store for us that we don't dream of. Among its 

* William James, *• Human Immortality," pp. 16-18. 



The Human Nature Club 211 

facts may be a real being for things other than our 
present feelings of them, a real freedom in our actions, 
a real existence apart from the body. Of another 
thing I'm still more confident. The more keenly we 
seek the truth about how things do seem to act, about 
what they see7ii to be, the better we shall know what 
they really are. The more earnestly we rationalize 
our lives, the more fully we rid ourselves of weak 
superstitions and blind imitation of other people, the 
less rein we give to accident and mere opinion and 
gross impulse, the more real freedom of will we shall 
have, if there be any. And the more zealously we 
work to make this a good and happy world, the better 
fitted shall we be to take our places in any other." 

''I'd like to read you a few words which show 
a*character that realizes Mr. Northrup's ideal," said 
Mr. Tasker, as he reached over to the bookcase and 
took down a book. 

''The Greek philosopher, Socrates, is on trial for 
impiety, and is threatened with death. Plato, his 
biographer, makes him say, in a passage which even 
in translation is of remarkable beauty: 

"'Some one will say: And are you not ashamed, 
Socrates, of a course of life which is likely to bring 
you to an untimely end? To him I may fairly answer: 
There you are mistaken; a man who is good for any- 
thing ought not to calculate the chance of living or 
dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing 
anything he is doing right or wrong — acting the part 
of a good man or a bad. .... For wherever 
a man's place is, whether the place which he has 
chosen or that in which he has been placed by a com- 



212 The Human Nature Club 

mander, there he ought to remain in the hour of 
danger; he should not think of death or of anything 
but disgrace. And this, O men of Athens, is a true 
saying. 

'* 'Strange indeed would be my conduct, O men of 
Athens, if I who, when I was ordered by the generals 
whom you chose to command me at Potidaea and 
Amphipolis and Delium, remained where they placed 
me, like any other man, facing death; if, I say, now, 
when, as I conceive and imagine, God orders me to 
fulfill the philosopher's mission of searching into my- 
self and other men, I were to desert my post through 
fear of death, or any other fear; that would indeed be 
strange, and I might justly be arraigned in court for 
denying the existence of the gods if I disobeyed the 
oracle because I was afraid of death; then I should be 
fancying that I was wise when I was not wise. For 
the fear of death is indeed the pretense of wisdom and 
not real wisdom, being a pretended knowledge of the 
unknown; and no one knows whether death, which 
men in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, 
may not be the greatest good. Is there not here con- 
ceit of knowledge which is a disgraceful sort of igno- 
rance? And this is the point in which, as I think, 
I differ from others, .... that whereas I know but 
little of the world below, I do not suppose that I know, 
but I do know that injustice and disobedience to 
a better, whether God or man, is evil and dishonor- 
able.'^ 

'^Socrates is declared guilty and condemned to 
death. His last words to the judges are: 

^Jowett's translation of Plato's ' Apologia." 



The Human Nature Club 213 

" 'Still I have a favor to ask of them. When my 
sons are grown up, I would ask you, O my friends, to 
punish them; and I would have you trouble them as 
I have troubled you, if they seem to care about riches 
or anything more than about virtue, or if they pretend 
to be something when they are really nothing — then 
reprove them as I have reproved you, for not caring 
about that for which they ought to care, and thinking 
that they are something when they are really nothing. 
And if you do this, I and my sons will have received 
justice at your hands. 

" *The hour of departure has arrived, and we go 
our ways — I to die and you to live. Which is better, 
God only knows.' "^ 

'Idem. 



CHAPTER XIX 

SOME ADVICE FROM THE EDITOR ABOUT MEANS 
OF STUDYING HUMAN NATURE 

There are many aspects of human nature which we 
may study, and a number of ways of knowing about 
them. One may, for instance, by living among peo- 
ple and watching their ways, gain an undefined, intui- 
tive skill in guessing what is in a man's mind, how he 
will act in various circumstances, and what are the 
best ways to handle him in order to attain some pur- 
pose we have set before us. The book agent knows 
human nature in its book-buying features in this way. 
The experienced teacher may in this way have a prac- 
tical knowledge of children, though she might not 
know how many senses they had or what the difference 
was between memory and instinct. The tactful soci- 
ety woman, too, may have a successful insight into 
people's feelings, without being at all able to analyze 
or describe them. A lofty instance of this intuitive 
knowledge of human nature due to the concrete study 
of actual people was furnished by Abraham Lincoln. 

There are also some gifted minds who, even in 
imaginative flights and conventional literary produc- 
tions, are able to present living men who might walk 
out of the novel or play into our church or club. To 
take the stock example, Shakspere possessed an 



The Human Nature Club 215 

imagination that could manufacture a dialogue that 
rings true to human nature. Yet he probably knew 
less than Mr. Tasker about the definite questions 
discussed in this book. He knew human nature 
imaginatively, but not scientifically. 

Now, it is patent that the editor of this book has 
no such knowledge of human nature as enables one to 
give lifelike portrayals of men and women. On the 
contrary, the characters in this book are little better 
than marionettes. They all talk alike. If you take a 
sentence and try to guess which member of the club 
spoke it, you find that you can't, that the author 
hasn't endowed his characters with life. If the book 
were intended to display the human nature of Mrs. 
Ralston and Misses Atwell, Fairbanks and Clark, 
and the rest, it would be a complete failure. Dra- 
matically it is an atrocity. Further, it is extremely 
probable that the author would make a mediocre book 
agent, and bring calamity to any social circle he 
might try to lead. 

One can study human nature considerably, then, 
without gaining concrete insight into people's minds 
or ability to portray them. One can study the elements 
that make up a person's mind and the general factors 
that influence our mental lives. This is what the psy- 
chologist does, what the members of the club did. 
It is likely that such general study of the workings of 
human minds will assist one's practical insight into 
concrete, individual characters. But the one does 
not presuppose the other. 

This study of the general factors at work in all 
minds consists of observing facts, thinking about 



2i6 The Human Nature Club 

them and testing the opinions thus gained by seeing 
how well they fit the facts observed. It is especially 
desirable to devise circumstances in which a person's 
behavior will reveal important facts about the work- 
ings of his mind, and reveal them in a definite, exact 
and unmistakable way. If you wish to know whether 
a person has acute power of sensation — of sight, for 
instance — it is better to arrange a lot of letters as 
oculists do, and observe how well he can read them at 
a certain distance, than to trust to your general obser- 
vations of the way he uses his eyes. It is better to 
make exact observations under illuminating condi- 
tions — that is, to make experiments — than to trust to 
chance observations. One can almost always improve 
his vague opinion on any subject by devising means 
to make his observations more detailed, more accu- 
rate and more significant. 

In studying human nature in the psychologist's 
way, one may well begin by observing and experi- 
menting on one's self. Look at your sensations, 
imagery, memories, judgments, emotions, decisions, 
acts, habits; test the delicacy of your discrimination, 
the extent of your memory, the degree of concentra- 
tion of which you are able; recall and think out your 
trains of thought, your dreams, your tastes and prefer- 
ences. The result will be that you will be better able 
to understand other people and to appreciate the 
meaning of what is said in books about psychology. 
The chapters in James's "Principles of Psychology" 
mentioned at the end of this book will be a helpful 
guide in this work. 

Mental life is, however, broader than the mea.sure 



The Human Nature Club 217 

of any single person's mind, and though training in 
the description and analysis of one's feelings is a use- 
ful, perhaps necessary, preliminary to the study of 
human nature, it is only one of a number of studies 
worth undertaking. Those whom it specially inter- 
ests may carry it out to a well-nigh unlimited extent, 
picking to pieces every feeling they have, and discov- 
ering its exact nature and composition, but the aver- 
age student will prefer to leave it after a while in 
favor of some of the following topics: 

1. The causes of our intellects and characters, the 
nervous activities which go with them, the influence 
of inherited structure, general bodily condition, drugs, 
foods, climate, brain diseases, education, etc. 

2. The causes of special mental and moral quali- 
ties, such as genius, insanity, criminality, idiocy, 
superstition, 'crankiness,' sentimentality, accuracy, 
attentiveness, etc. 

3. The origin of human nature and its develop- 
ment in the life of each human being from infancy. 
The mental life of lower animals. 

4. Differences in the mental make-up of different 
races and nationalities of men. 

5. The influence of our mental constitutions, our 
thoughts and feelings, on our actions, and so on other 
people. The part mental life plays in the world, 

6. The exact estimation of any individual's mental 
equipment and tendencies. A mental diagnosis which 
may inform a man what his nature is, how he differs 
from his fellows, what he is good for, what his weak- 
nesses are, etc. 

Other topics — e, g,^ the psychology of men as 



21 8 The Human Nature Club 

social beings, considering the relations of one mind 
to others, might be added to this list, but it is 
already long enough to show that there are plenty of 
questions concerning human nature worth thinking 
about. 

You may remember that the founders of the club 
started out with the notion that they could observe 
human nature without book knowledge or previous 
experience. They found it worth while to call in 
a man who knew about the human brain at their very 
first meeting, and they soon turned to Mr. Tasker's 
books as helpful and even indispensable. As soon as 
you study any aspect of human nature in earnest you 
will find that progress depends on knowing what 
other people have found out in that, and indeed in 
other sciences. To know much about a man's mind, 
you must know about his body, especially his nervous 
system, and thus you need a knowledge of anatomy 
and physiology. To study our second topic to the 
best advantage you must know something of the gen- 
eral laws of heredity. To study the third topic you 
must know the order of development in the animal 
world. Thus one needs an acquaintance with zoology. 
So on through the list. 

One's first duty, then, is modesty. Every reader 
of this book should know that it gives but a bare and 
meager outline of a very few of the facts of human 
nature, that it can only be an introduction to the 
study of mental life. Knowledge of psychology and 
ability to study psychology fruitfully are, we shall all 
agree, worthy accomplishments. Like most good 
things, they are hard to get. The best fruit on the 



The Human Nature Club 219 

tree of knowledge is on the topmost branches. To 
reach it you must climb. 

I have placed at the end of this chapter a list 'of 
books which may serve as guides in the study of psy- 
chology to any who have been awakened to an interest 
in such facts as this little book describes.^ 

In reading them it will be well to make as you go 
along a list of words the meaning of which is not 
entirely clear, and so far as possible to find out in 
each case the exact meaning then and there. It will 
also pay to compare the opinions of different authors 
in cases where they treat the same topic. It is of the 
utmost value to think up examples of every fact you 
learn, to note any evidence you can from your own 
experience for or against any statement made by an 
author, and to make sure as you go along that you 
know just what question the author is trying to settle, 
just what he is driving at. Finally, it is our duty 
toward any writer to drop for the time being our pre- 
vious conceptions and prejudices, to receive his opinion 
in an open mind. 

Reading books is but one way to get knowledge, 
and possibly not the best. If you have followed the 
suggestion made in the introduction, and collected 
facts and noted questions and made experiments, you 
will recognize that we verify our book knowledge by 
associating with it knowledge of real things. In the 
end, psychology must always be a system of facts 
about real men and women, and the study of books 
about psychology will be of most value to him who 

^These books are all worthy of purchase by any public library. Their 
contents should be in the main intelligible to any thoughtful student of 
this book. 



^±0 The Human Nature Club 

studies real people as well. General observation of 
people's thoughts and conduct should have already 
become your habit. Special detailed study of some 
phase of mental life is also of great service in 
bringing us close to fact and teaching us care and 
precision. 

I have therefore prepared directions for a number 
of such studies, none very pretentious, but all worth 
undertaking if one has the serious purpose of improv- 
ing his knowledge of psychology. Unless you are 
considerable of a genius it will be wise to follow these 
directions exactly. 

I. A Psychological Autobiography. 

The aim of this study is to find out what factors 
determine your mental history, what makes you the 
man or woman you are. 

Record every year what you think your mental 
make-up is, what knowledge, interests, habits, powers, 
ideas, emotional tendencies and type of will you 
possess. Write in detail. After the first record, 
made say in January, 1901, you need record annually 
only changes — /. ^., additions or losses. Then record 
all the important factors under the influence of which 
you have been that year. Then try to think how each 
change in you has been caused, and what the effect 
on you of each influence has been, and write down 
your opinions. So far as possible, recall your make-up 
at each year of your life, as far back as you can 
remember, and make a record for each year. Do the 
same with the influence of each year. Try to think 
out what has made you what you are from childhood 
on. Get the opinions of your family and friends. 



The Human Nature Club all 

Try to find good evidence for every opinion you 
rorm. 

A record like this is less irksome to keep than 
a diary, and probably much more profitable. A handy 
way of keeping it would be to use very wide paper, 
dividing it by vertical lines into three columns. In 
the first, one should describe his make-up under 
a number of separate headings, such as — 

age 

height 

weight 

health 

eyesight 

hearing 

imagery 

memory 

attentiveness 

method of thinking 

suggestibility 

imitativeness 

likes 

dislikes 

emotions 

vigor 

kinds 



etc. 

sentimentality 

nervousness 
bodily control 
type of will 

In the second column should be described, in some 
regular system of groups, all the factors that have 
been influencing you, such as: 



^11 The Human Nature Club 

1. Variations in growth, health, or other physical 
influences. 

2. Physical surroundings — /. e., locality, sights, 
sounds, etc. 

3. Persons. In the home. 

Out of the home. 

4. Organizations — e, ^., Church. 

Club. 

Business life. 
Political life. 

5. Information acquired — /. e., the influence of 
books, studies, etc. 

In the third column should be noted the inferences 
about what factors in column 2 caused the changes 
noted in column i. Of course, such a record should 
be carefully preserved, as it might be of great interest 
to one's children. 

A final caution is necessary concerning such 
a record. Confine yourself strictly to matters of 
observed facts concerning the outward manifestations 
of your make-up. Do not for the purposes of this 
record, or indeed for any purpose, think about 3"our 
inner self, your peculiar inward being or your moral 
nature. Do not pry into what lady novelists call **the 
recesses of your heart. " Your opinions about them 
would be of no psychological value to you or any one 
else, and they do not work well if looked at too often. 

A Study of Habit. 
In general. 

The aim of this study will be to give you some con- 
crete ideas of (i) the part habits play in human 



The Human Nature Club 223 

nature; (2) the regularity of habits; (3) their variety 
among different people; and (4) the speed with which 
acts become habitual. 

Notice in yourself and in as many other people as 
you can what acts are performed by mere force of 
habit. Keep records. See how much of human life 
is carried on in this way. See in the case of certain 
common automatic actions (i) whether the same per- 
son regularly performs the act in the same way; (2) 
how far different people perform the act in the same 
way. Keep records. Notice the growth of some 
habit. 

In particular, 

1. Think of a number of acts in the case of which 
it seems to you worth while to ask, **Is this performed 
automatically, or does it require conscious direction?" 
Take a broad sheet of paper and arrange your list in 
a column at the left-hand edge. Then at intervals of 
an inch or two rule vertical lines down the page. At 
the head of the columns thus formed put the names of 
the people you are observing, and a brief description 
of them — <?. g.^ age, occupation, ^d.xXy training, etc. 
Then when you find out whether any act is in the case 
of any one of them automatic, make a note beneath 
the proper name and on a level with the proper act. 

Your sheet then will look like the table given on 
page 224, after some time's work, and should eventu- 
ally be entirely filled out. 

2. Make a list of common habitual performances — 
e. g., putting on one's shoes, taking them off, taking 
off one's collar, opening the door of some frequently 



224 



The Human Nature Club 



















6 
















H 
















w 
















o 
















-•-• 
















<u 
















":l 


C/3 


t: 




1 




in 




°£ 


> 








> 




>. 
















i^ 
















*-* 
















u 
















■*-> 
















<D 
















«2 




d 


d 










. o 
"S2 




:z; 


:z; 










Ph 














>^ 
















VTk 
















u 
















<u 


£S 














W'O' 


•? o 


, 






, 


, 








VI 






OT 


(0 




c/5 o 
|S2 














O o 














>. 


>H X 














00 


(U 














c^ 
















u 
















<D 


ii 














<rO 




. • 












'.'g. 

5f? ^ 


d 












^^ 
















CO 


V 














rl- 












































^••n^ ^ ; 
















;, etc.—, 
ministe 
saying 
church 










































































d pc: j:! ' 






TJ 








■4-* 








OJ 








o 






1 


bfi 


bo 














.S 

(A 




ti) 


bX) 


epeat 
a iu( 
of th 
respo 
vice - 


d 




W 


Q 


^ 


< 


P4 


w 



The Human Nature Club (225 

visited room, carrying a light bundle, order of acts 
on sitting down to the breakfast-table, etc. 

Notice in every person you can whether the act is 
always carried out alike on say four different occa- 
sions. For instance, notice whether you always put 
on the left shoe first. Do you always take the same 
shoe off first? Notice which end of your collar you 
button first. See if you always do, so. Observe in 
the same way which hand is used to open the door, to 
carry a light bundle. It is still better to make the 
same observations concerning other people. And 
with such acts as the last example given above, it will 
probably be advisable not to try to watch yourself, as 
the idea of the watching will make your actions 
unnatural. Such acts as this last example are com- 
plex, and so your notes will have to be something like 
this: 

Mrs. A— 

Monday, took napkin, put it on lap, looked at clock, drank 

water. 
Tuesday, took napkin, put it on lap, drank water. 
Friday, took napkin, put it on lap, looked at clock, moved her 

knife and fork, 
Monday, took napkin, put it on lap, moved her knife and fork, 

drank water. 

Of course, you may find no such regularity. 

When you have gained an opinion concerning the 
regularity of habits in individuals, you can compare 
them with each other — e, g., suppose you have ob- 
served ten persons who regularly take off the same 
shoe first. Count up the number among them (i) 
who take off the right shoe first, and (2) who take ofif 



226 The Human Nature Club 

the left first. You can also see whether a person who 
is regular in one habit tends to be regular in all sorts 
of things, and vice versa. 

3. Take some simple accomplishment and practice 
it until it becomes automatic — e, g., writing a certain 
sentence on a typewriter, playing a piece of music, 
adding columns of figures. Keep records showing 
your improvement by the decrease in the time taken as 
the thing becomes habitual, decrease in mistakes, 
decrease in effort, decrease in disturbance by conver- 
sation, etc., increase in ability to yourself do some- 
thing else at the same time — e. g., talk, read, think, 
do mental arithmetic. 

Suppose, for example, you each day do ten ex- 
amples in addition of this length- 

94935 
88789 

67598 
88986 
45678 
98746 

94937 
89789 
68 598 
56786 
88986 



After a while you will be able to add and talk at 
the same time. You will also increase in speed, and 
find it after a while no effort. In carrying on such an 
experiment, you should make out on cards about fifty 
such examples. When you add, lay the card on 
a piece of paper, and put your result beneath it, thus: 



The Human Nature Club 



1227 



32657 
89456 
23472 
98657 
79864 
43729 
94976 
98678 
89567 
89976 
78868 
97869 



917769 

You can then use that same card again and again on 
later days, and save the work of making out new ex- 
amples. You will need fifty or more cards, however, 
so as not to have the same example reappear often 
enough to be remembered. 

On each day, or every second or third day, record 
(i) the time it takes you to do four examples; (2) the 
number of mistakes made in these four, if any; (3) 
your ability to work while some one is talking to you, 
and (4) your ability to work and talk at the same 
time. Two examples may be done under each of 
these conditions.^ See how far these records show the 
formation of the habit. 

^The record may be kept in this way: 





Time taken to 
do four. 


Mistakes in 
four. 


Time for two 

when 

disturbed. 


Time for two 

while repeating 

poetry. 


Jan. 4 










Jan. 5 










Jan. 6 










Etc 











!228 The Human Nature Club 

You can write the correct answer on the back of 
each card, or you can number the cards and make out 
a key with the right answer for each number. There 
will be hardly any labor in comparing the answer you 
obtain with that on the card or in the key and notic- 
ing how many figures, if any, are wrong. 
A Study of Pleasure. 

Get as many people as you can to write down or 
tell you the ten things which they enjoy most, in 
which they feel the most pleasure at the time. After 
this, get them to number according to the degree of 
pleasure they gain from them the following: ^ 

Eating dinner. 

Playing your favorite athletic game. 

Playing your favorite sedentary game. 

Working with tools, as in a garden. 

Reading a novel. 

Hearing music. 

Talking to a friend. 

Day-dreaming. 

Learning something. 

Writing something. 

Look over your lists. Consider whether various 
scruples — conventional, moral, etc. — would prevent 
people from mentioning certain things which might 
really give them the utmost pleasure. Consider how 
far any one is himself incapable of judging what he 
likes best. With these precautions, notice what 
pleasures people in general esteem, how far individuals 
differ, how far men and women differ, children and 
adults. Recall the pleasures of people of other 
nationalities. How much of people's tastes in the 

^Copied from the "Psychological Tests" used at Columbia University. 



The Human Nature Club 229 

matter of enjoyment seems inherited, how much due 

to training. 

Collecting Data for the Study of Heredity, 

The aim of this piece of work is to obtain a careful 
record of some simple facts about the physical and 
mental make-up of the different members of the same 
family. 

Get printed a hundred or more sheets like the fol- 
lowing: 

1. Date of birth Birthplace 

2. Occupation Residences 

3. Age at marriage 

4. Age, at marriage, of wife 

5. Mode of life so far as affecting growth or health 

6. Was early life laborious? Why and how?- 

7. Adult height — Color of hair when adult — Color of eyes-- 

8. General appearance 

9. Bodily strength and energy, if much above or below the 

average 

10. Keenness or imperfection of sight or other senses 

11. Mental powers and energy, if much above or below the 

average 

12. Character and temperament 

13. Favorite pursuits and interests Artistic aptitudes 

14. Minor ailments to ) In youth 

which there was [• 

special liability) In middle age 

15. Graver illnesses [ {jj S^IV" ' " 

-^ ^ In miaule age 

16. Cause and date of death, and age at death 

17. General remarks... 

Note. — This table is taken from the * Family Records ' of 
Mr. Francis Galton. 

Have your immediate and remote relatives fill them 
©ut carefully and completely. At the head of each 



230 The Human Nature Club 

put the name and relationship of the person //^//y. Do 
not say grandfather, but father's father, or mother's 
father, according to the side of the family on wh'ch 
he is. So with all relatives. You might thus have 
for a very distant relative: 

Mother's father's mother's brother's son. 

Keep all these records together. You will find 
them interesting to show relatives, and to examine 
yourself for cases of inherited mental qualities, and 
for the influence of training as well. 

If these studies lead you to invent others, to think 
about human life for yourself, and to try to see into 
it, you may be sure that they are worth your while. 

REFERENCES FOR THE FURTHER STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. 

The best book to begin with is William James's Talks to 
Teachers on Psychology ^ etc. Henry Holt & Co., New York 
Pp. 301. Price, $1.50. 

The next best book is by the same author; Principles of 
Psychology. 2 vols. Henry Holt & Co., New York. Pp. 1193. 
Price, $4.80. Read first chapters IV, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, 
XIV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXIV, 
XXV, XXVI. 

If this much reading has been done, any of the following 
list of books may be profitably begun: 

E. B. Titchener, Outline of Psychology, The Macmillan 
Co., New York. Price, $1.50. 

F. Galton, hiqiiiries into Human Faculty. The Macmillan 
Co., New York. (Out of print at present.) Pp. 379. 

C. Lloyd Morgan, Introduction to Comparative Psychology. 
Scribner's, New York. Pp. 377. Price, $1.25. (Discount gen- 
erally obtainable.) 

G. F. Stout, Manual of Psychology. Hinds & Noble, New 
York. Price, $1.60. 



The Human Nature Club 231 

F. Warner, The Study of Childre7t, The Macmillan Co., 
New York. Pp. 250. Price, $1.00. 

N. Oppenheim, The Development of the Child, The Mac- 
inillan Co., New York. Pp. 292. Price, $1.25. 

In connection with the study of the human mind it is of 
g ^at vahie to know something about the human body. For 
tl s purpose, read: 

The Human Body, H. N. Martin. Elementary Course, pp, 
261; Briefer Course, pp. 377. Henry Holt & Co., New York. 

Primer of Physiology, T. H. Huxley, revised by F. S. Lee. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Oct. 2004 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township. PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




013 177 940 9 







